


Inside Out

by candle_beck



Category: Baseball RPF
Genre: First Time, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-10
Updated: 2011-10-10
Packaged: 2017-10-24 12:08:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 40,486
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/263327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/candle_beck/pseuds/candle_beck
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Boy meets Richie.  Richie ruins boy.  Boy returns favor.  World keeps turning.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Inside Out

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Outside In](https://archiveofourown.org/works/255865) by [candle_beck](https://archiveofourown.org/users/candle_beck/pseuds/candle_beck). 



> Originally posted July 2009.

Inside Out  
By Candle Beck

 

You fall in Texas.

You will freely admit that you are not all the way sane, down there in Double-A. Everything is hyper-illuminated, senses cranked up so high you blink rapid-fire; you shiver and shake. You get into fights with dugout benches and Gatorade coolers, sneak down to the abandoned warehouses and hurl rocks through the windows, very late at night in the broken-glass quiet.

Twenty years old, cut loose of any obligation except to pitch, and tomorrow pitch some more. Midland is like a different planet, one set too close to the sun and on a skewed axis that lengthens the days, holds the heat solidly in place. You sweat through three shirts a day and the ensuing delirium feels completely excusable. You climb oil derricks searching for a breeze.

Bobby is there, anyway, sleeping next to you on a dusty blanket laid over the truck bed, driving you home in the slanted light of morning. He lets you get away with the crazy shit but says he won't lie for you if your stupid-ass stunts put you in the hospital and in shit with the ballclub. You agree that that is fair, and turn the headlights on a water tower from the top of which you can see a hundred miles in every direction.

You've known Bobby about two months, lived with him for most of that, shoddy little house on the edge of town with boards coming up from the porch, clouds of black flies over sinkholes in the yard. He's the best friend you'd ever had, somehow, and then it turns out that's just a smokescreen, a temporary diversion.

Every Sunday finds both of you out in the driveway, Bobby washing his car and you chucking sponges around, getting sunburned even though Bobby has told you a million times, sunscreen makes you no less of a man, Richie. You don't care. You kinda like the feel of it, skin tight and hot.

One of those Sunday you ambush him around the side of the car and wring a fully soaked sponge directly over his head, drenching his face and shirt. He shouts and knocks you onto the car, where you promptly slide off, roll laughing on the damp warm cement. Bobby comes looming, dumps the bucket of soapy water on you and then just kinda stands there staring down at you looking deeply surprised for some reason.

His shirt is stuck to his chest and stomach, spiky wet hair glistening and tinged dusky gold in the sunlight, and you get a very clear image of him on his knees, hands curled and tugging your shorts down while he gazes up at you steadily with those pretty blue eyes.

You grin, thinking, of _course_. Fucking around with the shortstop, what better way to pass the time down here in the bus leagues?

And Bobby will see the wisdom of it, of that you can be sure. Bobby gets tongue-tied around you when you don't have a shirt on sometimes. He leans towards you without realizing it, a dopey expression on his face. He knows you're crazy but he doesn't mind.

One night the two of you are hanging around the house trying to snap a recent string of bad luck, and you're as buzzed as you get without being sloppy drunk, having stumbled upon that immaculate frequency again. Bobby is pretending to only barely tolerate you, rolling his eyes and smirking as he washes the dishes, sleeves rolled to the elbows and forearms white-streaked with soap.

He says something about how indulging you is so much more fun than going out and getting laid, seriously, dude, and you feel adrenaline kick up in you because he is giving you these edgy dark-eyed looks and licking his lips unconsciously. It bursts in you, right now, _right the fuck now_.

You grab his belt and pull him close, you say, "You don't have to go out to get laid, man," and his eyes go huge as he does not hesitate, sliding his wet arms around your neck and kissing the smile off your mouth.

Bobby knows exactly what he's doing. The soap crackles over-loud in your ears as he holds your head in his hands, licks into your mouth, gets to every part of you. You shove your arms up under his shirt and jerk in shock from the feel of skin on skin. and he pushes you back into the counter, sucking on your lower lip and if you weren't crazy before, you certainly would be by now.

Panting, you hear yourself begging, "Oh suck me off Bobby, please say you will," and it might have embarrassed you if it didn't work so well on him, his body shuddering against yours as he nods in fast awkward jerks against your shoulder. He rucks your shirt up and sinks slowly to his knees, his mouth moving on a crooked line down your chest and stomach.

He's pretty goddamn good at that, too, so much so that by the end it's all you can do just to gasp at the ceiling and scrabble at his ears. You finish crashingly, mouth stuttering filth and nonsense. Bobby gives you about three seconds of recovery time before hauling you down to the floor with him, grabbing your hand and shoving it into his jeans. You get with the program, press your face into his throat and jerk him off fast and hard as he moans and bangs his head on the cabinets.

Then you're lying in a heap with him on the kitchen floor, staring upside-down at the refrigerator. He's heavy, draped all across you. You tell him, "We're definitely doing that again."

Bobby grunts, thumps his head against your shoulder. You grin up at nothing; you know that means yes.

You do it again a lot. You spend the rest of the season having more sex with Bobby Crosby than you've ever had with anybody else. The two of you get ridiculously good at it.

Living together helps. You've always liked what boys look like freshly rolled out of bed and muzzy-headed scrounging for breakfast first thing in the morning. Bobby elbows you aside when you're shaving and brushes his teeth standing hip to hip, crowded closer than strictly necessary, watching you in the mirror. Little kink he's got there, you with half your face coated white and half gleaming clean and smooth, you in a towel with your hair sticking up in jagged shapes, and usually he's back on his knees as soon as he's rinsed and spat. You nag him for the waste of toothpaste as he's mouthing across the trenched lines of your stomach and hips, your voice going all high and full of air.

You don't sleep in his bed and he doesn't sleep in yours, because even at night it's still as hot as an overworked kitchen, and Bobby, he jacks your own temperature up three degrees just from proximity. You don't room with him on the road, either, because it would require effort and negotiations and some plausible explanation for it, the formulation of which has you both totally stumped; normal people get sick of each other eventually.

And anyway, you like sneaking around, rendezvousing with Bobby in the hotel hallway after curfew and taking the back stairwell to the laundry room in the basement. You turn off the light and kick out the wedge that's holding the door open, and the room becomes red-lit by the Coke machine in the corner. Everyone looks good like that, young and deep-eyed.

Bobby perches on one of the washers and you take off your shirt, come to stand between his legs feeling like it's been weeks instead of less than a day. He hooks you around the neck and pulls your mouth to his, always so fierce and determined about it, vaguely pained. Bobby has decided do this, and he never does anything halfway. He lets you unbutton his jeans and push him to slide back on the washer, an ideal height for him to fuck your mouth for the longest time, Bobby chewing his knuckles raw to keep himself quiet.

He's not used to this kind of thing. He tries to tell you once, "I'm not really like this, you know," and you don't believe him at all.

You make sure he's not intending to stop fucking around with you, and then brush it off. Bobby's conflicted, getting in pretty deep with you and balking against it instinctively because he doesn't think he's gay enough to actually go the distance with a dude, sleep in the same bed and everything. He's only ever screwed around with guys on a per diem basis, teammates more than happy to keep his secret and not meet his eyes the next day, opponents who subtly cruised him while standing at second base. Before he met you, it all could be written off fairly easily.

Then there's you, and you've been gay your whole life. At six years old you had the biggest crush on your T-ball coach; you can still remember the wild careen in your chest when he'd scooped you up in a hug after you'd smacked a home run onto the next field over. At thirteen you babbled on so much about your science lab partner that your mom sat you down and said seriously, "Richie, you know it's okay to have these feelings-"

and you had to cut her off, horrified, "Mom! Already aware! Gay and psyched about it!"

She had blinked, smiled, said you were such a smart boy, and you almost broke something, you rolled your eyes so hard. Then she let you have three dozen Bagel Bites for dinner, and you forgave her everything.

Anyway, you've been waiting for someone exactly like Bobby as long as you can remember, but he's taking a little longer to reach the same conclusion.

You're so pleased with how your life is going. By the end of the season, you can't even remember what day it was, that first time in the kitchen with the soap popping in your ear like soft firecrackers, Bobby's bare back under your hands. You can't say, this is where it started, and you kinda like that, like Bobby's always been here.

Last morning in the house, he bends you over the kitchen table, the only piece of furniture no one on craigslist wanted (minor fire damage), and fucks you goodbye with the cab waiting outside and his teeth denting the back of your shoulder. He goes home to California and you spend a couple weeks in Victoria and then go bumming around the world on your signing bonus until Christmas. You see Thailand and Australia; you go swimming in the Arabian Sea.

You send Bobby postcards from everywhere you go. You buy phone cards and set up shop at train station phone booths where there's a little bench to sit on, talking to him for an hour or two, eleven thousand kilometers away from each other and it shrinks to nothing when you have Bobby's voice in your ear.

After the holidays, you make it about a week before getting too antsy to deal with anything, and you throw a bag together, leave a note for your parents and light out for California.

It takes you two days to drive to Long Beach, taking the slow route all the way down the coast.

You call Bobby from the parking lot of an In-n-Out Burger, leaning against the car and sucking on a strawberry shake in the amazingly pleasant January day. Bobby picks up distracted and off his game, missing your cues and asking, "What?" every time you try to tell him something. You scowl behind your sunglasses, uncomfortable feeling in your stomach because Bobby should pay attention to you, he should want to hear that you've driven the whole edge of the country to come and see him.

It's okay once you get to his place, though. Bobby tries to maintain his cool, act like he's not at all fazed that you've shown up out of the blue, but you catch his eyes on you focused and heated, confused because maybe he hasn't really expected his gayness to follow him into the off-season. You take pity on him, crowd him up against the counter with your hips notching into his, his mouth opening on a silent gasp.

You smile. "Happy New Year, Bobby," you say, and he wraps his hand around the back of your head, splits your lip kissing you too hard and you will still be giving him grief for that years later.

You laze around his house for the rest of the off-season, directionless and unmoored, unworried. In the mornings you ride down to the beach to watch Bobby surfing. You get churros and ice cream bars from the cart for breakfast, Bobby's wet-suit split open and peeled down to his waist, salt drying on his skin, cinnamon sugar on his mouth. It's usually all you can do to keep from molesting him in public; once or twice you don't make it out of the parking lot, going down on him while he hangs on to the wheel for dear life, groaning, "Kids, little kids and fucking _families_ right out there, you fucking slut, Richie, oh my _god_."

Back home, Bobby takes a shower and comes to watch trashy reality shows and play video games and make out with you until someone gets hungry or you run out of beer, and then the two of you head out into the cool afternoon, the rare winter rains. You always come back drunk and late, necking in the front hallway for long hallucinatory stretches, oxygen-deprived and giddy.

The two of you sleep in the one bed, and at first you keep jolting awake every time Bobby rolls over or coughs or brushes up against you, but after a few weeks you can sleep through it all.

A couple days before you're due to report in Phoenix, you and Bobby are watching some gangster flick with an impenetrable plot. You're slumped under his arm, and he's toying idly with your shirt sleeve, eyes narrowed and flashing with blue light. Kinda drunk, pretty tired, comfortable as all hell with the curve of your body matching Bobby's, and you think that you should tell him, warn him at the very least: _lost my balance awhile ago, Bobby, think I've been falling._

But instead you drift off to sleep. You dream about baseball, and you're just stupidly happy.

You start the season back in Midland. Bobby goes to Triple-A in Sacramento and now you have two reasons to get there as soon as possible. He mocks you over the phone, dubs you 'bus league' and 'meat' and you tell him that you got clocked at 102 mph today, certainly hard enough to kill anyone dumb enough to call you names.

Bobby gets quiet for a second, then asks, "A hundred and two, are you fucking serious, Rich?" with this crazy rough edge of disbelief in his voice.

And you're grinning, swearing to it. You can't wait to show him.

You get brought up to Sacramento two weeks into the season. On the plane to California you rip the in-flight magazines to shreds and the flight attendants glare at you even though you tried to get all the bits into the barf bag. You can't help it, your hands won't stay still and you're honestly not sure if they're itching for a baseball or Bobby Crosby.

You get both.

The Rivercats pitching coach is introducing you around the clubhouse and you're trying to be covert about desperately scanning the room for the shortstop, hands balled up in fists at your sides. Bobby manages to get behind you, tackles you with a hug that sends you lurching forward into the coach, everyone staggering a few feet. You wrench yourself upright and get your arm hooked around Bobby's neck, his shoulder jammed against your chest and you can't breathe, beaming and huffing and cursing up a storm.

"And I see you've already met Crosby," the pitching coach says dryly, and you shoot him a grin, let Bobby haul you off to the lockers talking a mile a minute.

He doesn't take his hands off you, touching bare skin below your shirt sleeve, over your collar, minor electric shocks jerking through you every time. You close a fist in his jersey and lean close to say, "We have to go somewhere with a locking door right now," and his eyes flare black.

Quick tight nod and he whips his gaze across the room to make sure no one's paying attention and you're probably being way more obvious than you should be, hand clenched in Bobby's jersey and staring at him, standing too close, but you have never actually _cared_ , only put on a show for Bobby's sake and even that's starting to fray.

He takes you to some closet jam-packed with office supplies and stacked crates of David sunflower seed packs. Shoves you up against the door, bites your mouth open and licks over your tongue and you are clinging to him, one leg already hooked around his hip because this is what he does to you, goddamn.

You have supplies in your pocket, maybe kind of expecting this or at least hoping, and you tell him to fuck you, hoarse and insistent just to watch him twitch. You twist and brace yourself on the door, pull his hand up to cover your mouth. Sharp teeth on his fingers and he's moaning quietly into your shoulder, jerking your jeans and shorts down roughly, mouthing at your neck.

You mumble, "Hurry, hurry the fuck up," and all Bobby can say is your name. He presses in and the two of you gasp as one, his fingers slipping out of your mouth as you flatten your cheek on the smooth wood of the door, shocky and almost freaked out by how good it feels. Bobby curls his hand on your shoulder, wet fingertips slipping on your collarbone, wraps his other around your hip and he can move you like that, guide you down and forward and back. You're beyond sense, little whines punched out of you and your head all full of stars.

Things progress somewhat quickly from there.

Bobby lives month-to-month in a one-bedroom within walking distance of the stadium. You pick up a second dresser from a yard sale, take over a hall closet as your own. You have your parents ship you a box of clothes and a box of videogames. It's not until you're unloading the groceries, sliding your cereal in between Bobby's Wheaties and Kix, that you realize you never asked if you could move in with him.

Bobby's screwing around on the living room floor trying to get your N64 and Playstation II hooked up alongside his Xbox. Black, white, and gray wires snake and tangle around him, and he looks up as you lean in the doorway, frustrated and looking about seven years old.

"I think it's broken," Bobby says. He scratches his forehead and leaves a smear of ash-colored dust above his eyebrow.

You think about how you should ask him if he's really cool with you staying, if he's starting to get sick of you yet, if it's okay that you never want to leave. You kinda steamrolled him into a lot of this, reading so much into his abortive gestures and guilty looks. He had misgivings but you never did, and you wonder if he's all the way here with you now, if it makes the kind of sense to him that it does to you. You think about how you want to take him home to Canada and marry him.

Instead you say, "I think your face is broken," and go to unpack the rest of your stuff.

You perform very well in the Pacific Coast League. Everything cuts so sharply out of your hand you keep expecting the stitches to tear your skin. You've unearthed this phantom pitch, you can barely feel it at the tips of your fingers, this splitter that knuckles and flutters and dies at the knees and no one knows what to call it; no one can really speak after seeing it somehow dance across the strike zone.

The coaches huddle and squint, and you wing a couple pitches sidearm, get barked at for screwing with your motion even though you were just messing around. You pin a few change-ups to the outside corner and they say, "Keep this shit up, kid, and you'll beat all these motherfuckers up there."

You don't know what to make of that. You say, "Thanks?" and then go to find Bobby.

Bobby's hitting the cover off the ball and has taken to watching you a lot, just kind of letting his gaze hook and follow you around. You're always aware of it, heat on the back of your neck, skin prickling on your arms. You wink and blow him ironic kisses, and he rolls his eyes, never looking away.

It's in Salt Lake City that you first start to think that Bobby might be in it for real. The rest of the team goes to some breeder club that you're resolutely not interested in, and so you and Bobby find a regular bar instead. You shoot some pool, play some darts. You get pretty fucked up and get a little hands-on, gripping the back of Bobby's neck, scuffing across his hair, looping an arm around his shoulders and leaning your weight on him as you wait at the bar.

You don't think anything of it. The world's so much easier to take when you've got a hand on him, and Bobby doesn't mind, dull flush on his face and a low pleased feeling burring out of him.

Fifth or sixth shot and it's one too many, it must be. Bobby sinks an unbelievable bank shot and you holler too loud, all astonishment and pride, grab him and press a kiss to the side of his head.

Stupid, very stupid--maybe all the time you've spent in California this year has made you soft.

At any rate, someone latches onto your arm, thick fingers digging in, and rips you away from Bobby, shoves you hard to the floor. You sprawl and thwack, head ricocheting, blooming with pain, and through the haze you hear:

"This ain't a fuckin' faggot bar,"

and you get killing angry.

You scramble to your feet, hauling yourself up on the pool table with your mouth wrenched and sawdust in your hair. You're just in time to see Bobby feint at your attacker with his pool cue and then whip his elbow into the man's face, a bright explosion of red. The man, a hulking filthy-jacketed trucker type, drops to his knees with a cry, both hands trying to hold back the spill of blood, and Bobby serves him a rib-buckling kick in the chest, sends him skidding back across the floor.

Then Bobby's eyes light on you and you see a wild burn there, something elemental and pure that sets you shaking. His hand locks on your arm, and you drag him close, throw your arm around his shoulders and sneer at the rest of the bar, indistinguishable smear of hostile faces.

"He's goddamn right, no self-respecting faggot would be caught dead in this pissant dive."

You spit on the ground, feel Bobby's hand clutch warningly in your shirt. You don't care. You hope they do come after the two of you, give Bobby an excuse to use the pool cue and show off that beautiful swing of his. You know you could take every one of these motherfuckers.

But no one makes a move, all of them plainly lynching the two of you in their minds but not wanting to run the risk their compatriot did of getting the shit kicked out of him by a queer.

You and Bobby make it out into the parking lot and only then do you show some sense and run, because you don't have a car and the last thing you need is to get gay-bashed on the way back to the team hotel. You're laughing, stumbling over broken squares of sidewalk, the rhythm of your and Bobby's strides falling like a too-fast heartbeat. Adrenaline and triumph and this great blasting feeling in your chest, this sense of having been blown wide open.

You get far enough away that no one will follow, and then you pull Bobby into a convenient alley, push him up against the wall.

"Amazing, that was amazing," you say breathlessly, kneading your hands in his shirt. Bobby touches your forehead where a knot is forming, his mouth thin and intent.

"Motherfucker put his hands on you," Bobby explains absently, like it should be self-evident.

You shift closer to him, kicking his feet apart to slide your leg between. Your face burns hot, your head light and glassy. You've never felt like this before.

"Bobby," you say into his throat. He hums, stroking his hands up under your shirt. "Fuck, man, that's it. It's you, I'm done with everyone else. I only want you from now on."

And Bobby almost chokes on his laugh, his fingers tightening on your sides. He nudges your face up with his own and gets a look at you. You grin idiotically, unhinged, wanting to show everything so that he might believe you. Bobby says your name, drops his head back on the wall and laughs helplessly up at the sky. You lick along the line of his throat, storing away the taste and the feel of him swallowing against your mouth. He holds you flush against him and tells you yes over and over again.

So that's settled. You've stumbled upon the first great love of your life, here in the minor leagues, and you go down to the high school field on a Sunday and have Bobby pitch to you because all you want to do is hit home runs.

You have a couple more months living with him in Sacramento, and you end up staying in a lot, fooling around in front of movies with the lights off, playing dirty Scrabble, falling asleep on top of each other on the couch. Something has shifted in Bobby since Salt Lake City. He's easier, sweet and calm in the mornings, watching you in a different way now, like he's stopped trying to figure you out and is just enjoying the view. He remembers little off-hand things you say, bands you heard were cool, this neat-looking graffiti art book you saw in a shop window, the really cute guy you like on a billboard for a new TV show, and suddenly you have concert tickets and a package from Amazon.com and a post-it reminder stuck to the television screen on the day the series debuts. Bobby doesn't say much about any of it, but you're pretty sure you couldn't love him this hard without him being the same way.

Then in July the Oakland Athletics call you up to the major leagues.

You don't remember a whole lot from that night. The boys take you out and get you loaded, pour you into a cab with Bobby at the end of it, wishing you all the best, waving from the sidewalk. You hang out the window shouting see you soon, give 'em hell, boys, and then slump back next to Bobby, groping him clumsily as he snickers and pretends to fend you off.

A chunk is missing, and then the next thing you remember is tumbling down onto the bed with Bobby, his chin clocking across your cheek and you can't feel it, just the rough slide of his body against yours, the overwhelming thrum all through you because tomorrow you're going to the Show.

And you remember Bobby saying fast, voice scraping, "You can fuck me this time, Richie, it's okay," and you're one hundred percent sure that he loves you then, because he's never done that before and this was already the best night of your life.

You only remember bits and pieces from then on. Your mind doesn't trust you to bear the full weight of it, like how angels have to appear in human form so they don't burn people's eyes out of their sockets. You get snatches, the long slick line of Bobby's back under your hands, how he buries his face in his folded arms and chews bruises onto his biceps, how he pushes back against you rough and off-rhythm like he doesn't want to but can't help it, and how by the end you've reduced him to one endless moan, and you wrap your arms around his chest from behind, press your face to his shoulder. He's the only thing you can feel, everywhere and all around.

You still feel like you've been blinded in a mild way. You don't think you'll ever be able to see anything else the same, the rest of the world sure to cloud, dim and dull.

In the morning Bobby makes you chocolate chip pancakes, and then drives you the eighty miles to Oakland, keeping you distracted with filthy jokes and rambling anecdotes that ring false and fantastical. You appreciate what he's trying to do because you could flip your shit so easily right now, it's not even funny.

You're twenty-one years old and in a whole bunch of ways, your life begins right now.

It takes Bobby another six weeks before he comes to join you in the major leagues. By then you've already had an improbably spectacular start to your career as a starter, so good you almost want to toy with the hitters, stick them in an 0-2 hole and then throw stuff they can only foul off, maybe seven or eight swings just so they'll be especially exhausted when you finally have mercy and strike the fuckers out. You can put the ball anywhere you want. You throw triple-digits all the freakin' time, get-'em-over fastballs and waste pitches that you blaze on in there just because you _can_.

It's fairly encouraging. You know better than to read your own press (you only had to know Barry Zito maybe three hours before recognizing the walking-cautionary-tale aspect to him), but you also know that your mom and dad are filling scrapbooks for you to have when there's no longer any risk of jinxing it. God only knows when that will be, but anyway.

Everyone seems to agree that you belong up here. This is on a list of your three major life goals, along with the amorphous idea of love that has crystallized in Bobby Crosby, and climbing Mt. Everest (don't worry, you'll get to it), so it's understandable that you're feeling pretty fucking terrific about the whole thing. Twenty-one years old, and two out of three checked neatly off. You're like six different kinds of prodigy.

You explain this to Bobby over the phone (you might be drunk), and he somewhat misses the point, asks how come you only have three major life goals because he's got at least a dozen knocked off already and twice that left to go. He starts listing them, of course, and you think he might be fucking with you because no _way_ has Bobby ever been involved in an orgy--"Overreached," you tell him, "I woulda believed a threesome."

You rein him in, get him to stop snickering. The ever-present pain under your ribs-- _wish he were here_ cold-whistling through you--spikes up when you hear his breath hitch as he quiets. Your head is too heavy for your body and you lay it in the cradle of your arm curled on the table, drawn in around yourself.

The point, which you try painstakingly to relay to him as you slouch in the deserted breakfast room at the hotel, staring sideways at a huge blank television screen, is that the only two objectives that matter are major league baseball, and having a partner in crime. The game you love, the person you love, done and done.

Bobby doesn't say anything for a long time.

You are not so drunk as to think that that's insignificant. You squeeze your eyes shut, wondering if you've fucked it up.

"Yeah," Bobby answers eventually, sounding farther away. "Generally good goals to have, I'd say."

But that's not the _point_ , they've already been _achieved_ , and you don't know any other ways to get that across. Bobby already knows that you're completely fucking gone on him, he doesn't need to act so ruffled and off-key. You're about to ask him to gay-marry you just to freak him out more, if he fucking wants to play it that way after more than a goddamn _year_ , but then you stop short.

It occurs to you suddenly, feels like a smack. One of those things on Bobby's epic life goal list is almost assuredly 'get married and have kids.' A gauzy vision of the future since he was a kid himself, and never once has he pictured another guy where the pretty little wife should be.

Goddamn it, you _have_ fucked it up. It's not like you, your instincts are usually so good. You're angry with yourself, mostly, because you know better than to bring this stuff up when Bobby's not here for you to distract with a hummer. You're only a bit still pissed-off at him, but it's fucking noisy for a minority opinion.

Bobby loves you; he shouldn't fucking _care_.

Anyway, you change the subject hurriedly and pretend like you're just drunk, just talking shit, and after a minute Bobby relaxes and gets going on a rant about the subpar quality of the umpiring in the Coast League.

You can't sleep that night. You're living rent-free in the back bedroom of the house shared by a few of your teammates. All their crap is still stored in here, snowboards and a pile of winter coats and a pair of fishing rods casting eerie twig-like shadows on the wall. You feel temporary and out of place and you wonder what Bobby looks like at this moment, if he's still sleeping on his side of the bed like you are.

You get through it. Bobby shows up on the bus with the September call-ups and you just barely manage not to suck him off in front of everyone, and then the two of you are sitting next to each other in a major league dugout, blinking in astonishment.

Bobby puts his arm around your shoulders in the fifth inning, tips his head towards yours as you freeze, heat soaking under your skin. Out of the corner of your eye, you can see the edge of Bobby's mouth curl into this impossibly sweet half-smile.

"Ask me for anything you want tonight," he says right in your ear, and then pulls his arm away and sits back and you pray with all you have that the two of you aren't on camera at this moment, because you're pretty sure you're staring at him in a ridiculously obvious manner, your eyes enormous and dark and your mouth cocked open.

"Jesus _Christ_ , Bobby." You grit your teeth. He's grinning moronically out at the field.

"This is incredible," he says, and you don't think he's talking about you anymore, but maybe, maybe it's all tied up together now, you and him and baseball and everything.

"This is nothing," you tell him, still gazing at him part lovesick and part mortified. "Wait till we win."

You do win, that day and the next and the next. It's a very good team, you tell him as you drive home that first night. He's already aware, he can read the box scores, and everyone in the game knows that there's spooky good voodoo hovering around Oakland just now, but he lets you go on and on, every player and all the connections between them, Bobby nodding along and turning back to gape at the view of the bay as you climb into the hills.

You're thinking about that promise he made you in the fifth inning and you've got a hand around his wrist, dragging him along with you up the walk and into the house. You forget that you've even got roommates until Mark Mulder shouts questioningly from the kitchen, and then you've got to go and show them Bobby, standing at least two feet away from him because you are in _no_ state right now, every horizontal surface looking equally good.

Finally, finally, you get Bobby back into your bedroom, door locked and lights off and you're both tearing out of your shirts, reaching for each other. You're clumsy, faint soft taste of sunscreen on Bobby's skin and for some reason it's driving you out of your mind. Your hands are flying all over the place, knocking Bobby's aside, chipping off his jaw, and eventually he gets tired of you being so desperately amateur, takes your head in his hands and kisses you until you're limp and pliant and he can dump you on the bed. You get up on your elbows to watch him stripping out of his jeans and working you out of yours too, and then he's sliding between your legs and bracing himself over you.

"Hiya," Bobby says, and smiles, just fucking _beautiful_ sometimes. You kiss the hell out of him, leave him gasping and dazed. "Ah, goddamn, Richie, I missed the fuck out of you."

You haul him down, breaking the taut lines of his arms and toppling his body onto yours. "Yes, very much with the missing," you say, stupid breathy tone in your voice but how can that be helped?

Bobby huffs out a laugh, noses at your cheek. "What's the play, dude?"

You shake your head, biting your lip hard and trying to get yourself in order. You're not gonna mess around here, it's been six weeks.

"'m gonna fuck you first and that'll last about thirty seconds, and then you can do me," you say, grinning because it's gonna be _spectacular_.

Bobby shivers, buries his face in your throat and you can feel him breathing raggedly for a few seconds, gnawing soft and kinda frantic over your collarbone. You rock your hips up experimentally and sure enough, quick-draw over there is already half-hard. You fold your hands around his hips, tug until he gets the idea and shifts to straddle your body, his fists dug into the mattress to either side of your head.

"Like this, I think," you whisper. You're staring up at him like he's due to vanish at midnight, like you'll never get another chance, and he's staring right back.

It is the best sex of your life by about a mile. You last slightly longer than thirty seconds with Bobby on top, but that's only because he sets this absurd glacial pace, sinking down with his eyes half-lidded and black and locked on you, your hands clutching his hips and his hands wrapped around your wrists. He tests every centimeter, every angle, moving so slow and killing you, _destroying_ you, and it's nothing but the shape of his mouth silently forming your name as his eyes slip closed that finishes it for you.

He wastes no time getting his own back, rolling you onto your stomach and giving you a pillow to bite on before promptly fucking you through the mattress. Bobby has his face buried between your shoulder blades and you can feel him swallow his moans, bite down on his groan with his mouth to your spine. Just before you come for the second time, you catch yourself wondering what the fuck you've been doing with your life that's not _this_.

Once you have Bobby and baseball in the same place again, the days begin to fly. The dash to the post-season is one of those things that seems insanely overexposed while it's happening, everything so brightly outlined, but then when it's over it smears like wet ink, weeks tangling up together. You play baseball and you have a lot of sex with Bobby and you don't care anymore about the passage of time.

The A's get knocked out in the first round, same as the last three years running, and afterwards everyone looks literally whipped, lashed and flayed until their backs are bent and their faces damp with tears. Miguel Tejada is taking the whole thing very poorly, and Bobby's uncomfortable with his hand on Miggy's back and his palpable awareness that he's the reason the team is letting Tejada walk as a free agent. Everybody says goodbye, slowly packing up their lockers, and you think about how things will look different next year, once you and Bobby are both here to stay.

You're splitting up for the first few weeks of the off-season, you heading north and him south, but before you go he takes you car shopping.

Bobby sold the truck that he'd had since college back in Sacramento, once they told him he would be getting on the bus to Oakland with the other chosen ones. He intends to spend a sizable chunk of his signing bonus on something big and black and shiny, show up in Phoenix next year a baller in all senses of the word.

You go out to the fancy auto row in Walnut Creek and spend an afternoon wandering long aisles of sun-struck luxury cars, silver jaguars leaping forward everywhere you look. Bobby could not be more excited, chattering away with the salespeople and stroking his hand across butter-soft leather interiors. He hangs on to your belt listening to the spiel of available accessories and financing options, and he doesn't realize he's doing it, which thrills you, makes you color but the Indian summer is stretching on and you can blame it on the heat.

Bobby tells you about his dad's cars for probably the sixtieth time, the keepsakes of Ed Crosby's own major league career. Though the family lived very sensibly and middle-class for the most part, there they were in the driveway like tangible dreams, cherry-red Mustang convertible, classic F-100 pick-up, perfectly restored vintage Impala. Bobby knows those cars like he knows baseball, encyclopedically.

This car will be the first of his eventual collection, and he goes for functionality first, gets an Escalade so big you can both lie down in the back without even having to shift the seat. You could move into this car, and you kind of want to, watching Bobby grin and pet the seats, rub his thumb on the shiny dials of the stereo. You can see fifty years of Sundays ahead of you, pelting sponges at Bobby and catching him up against the blinding gleam of American metal.

Things slow down once Bobby drives away down I-5 and you go back to Canada alone.

It's jarring, back in your little hometown without any of the touchstones you've learned to depend on so heavily, even the ones you hadn't consciously noticed; you miss the everyday sunlight, the sweeping blue sky.

Your parents can't miss you moping around, and you don't bother to mince words, informing them that you've fallen for a teammate and you don't do well when he's not around. They look worried, fair enough considering the perils and pitfalls inherent to playing baseball for a living, but express cautious optimism because you have always landed on your feet. You agree that you really are quite well-adjusted, and thank them for that, and then you all go for pizza.

It makes things simpler when you talk Bobby into coming up to see you after Thanksgiving. He doesn't take much convincing, decides to drive it to see how his new car handles over a long haul, but you don't care how he wants to pretty it up; you know what it's like to make that drive when there's someone waiting at the other end.

Bobby gets in late, keeping you on the phone for the last forty minutes so he doesn't fall asleep at the wheel. You're sitting on the front steps when he pulls in, heavy coat over your thin T-shirt and Bobby crashes down into you from out of his fucking huge car. You catch him in your arms, laughing, wishing people could see the two of you together because it's really kinda remarkable.

You take him inside, take him upstairs where your parents are in bed watching a rerun of _Law & Order_. You present Bobby in the doorway, tossing your arm around his shoulders and brandishing a gleeful smile.

"This is Bobby who I told you about, he made excellent time."

Your parents smile and nod approvingly, introduce themselves by their first names even though you know Bobby will call them sir and ma'am for at least the first five years. They ask Bobby about the drive and how he likes the team and how long he's known you, and Bobby's tense under your arm but his voice holds even.

"'kay, family time's over," you announce eventually, pulling Bobby closer. "Good night, love you people, c'mon Bobby."

Bobby waits until you're in your room and your hands are under his shirt before asking, "What'd you tell them about me?"

You're distracted, licking his throat. "The truth."

"That, that being?"

His voice catches, gives, and you lift your head, some of the fog of arousal clearing off. Bobby's head is tipped back, his lower lip pulled between his teeth. You cup a hand around the nape of his neck, tug him to look at you. His gaze flicks and tries to dance away but you nip at his mouth and he sucks in a sharp breath. His eyes stick on you again, big and dark and scared.

"You know what you are to me, man," you say. There's a lump in your throat, something seeping cold as quicksilver in your stomach. "Just waiting for you to figure it out too."

His mouth goes thin and for a second you're wildly afraid, but then he's walking you backwards and laying you on the bed, one hand on your face and the other wide across your stomach.

"I've figured it out, Richie," he says, sandpaper in his whisper. "Every time you go away I miss you so fucking bad."

He kisses you then and it's a good thing, you might have laughed out loud otherwise and he probably wouldn't have understood why. Instead you get to kiss him, rasp your hands over his buzzed hair and suck on his tongue, and no matter how often this happens you will never get used to it, never get over it.

You stop bringing up the future unless it relates to baseball. You believe the things that he's told you; you sleep side by side in your kid's bed with the hockey player sheets, and now when he moves, you move.

You're four days behind when he goes home for Christmas. You stay just long enough to open presents in the morning with your family, and then you hop the first plane, no time for the romance of the coastal highway when it's been four days since you've seen him.

He lives in a place a couple blocks away from the ocean this year, and you move back in with him for the rest of the winter. The time goes very quickly, all coffeeshops and sand in your shoes and flash-quick afternoons wandering the boardwalk, because you are just stupid in love with him and he's always around.

You have to report to Phoenix on Valentine's Day, two weeks earlier than he does, and when you start packing up your stuff, he starts packing up his, like it wasn't even a _question_. You could almost fly, you're so goddamn happy.

You'll both need a car out there, so you drive out following his shiny black Cadillac, stopping to exchange handjobs in a gas station bathroom somewhere near Joshua Tree, drag-racing down the empty two-lane stretches of I-10. There's a condominium complex that puts up ballplayers for spring training, and you manage to snag the choice room at the end of the hall, with a blue view of the pool and the desert stretching out all around. Bobby stands at the window looking out, and you watch him from across the room for a minute, his fine wide shoulders blocking the light and his big hands pressed to the glass.

A few days later you have worked the stiffness and rust of the off-season out of your arm, and pitching doesn't hurt anymore. Your shoulder feels fuzzy and pleasantly swollen, every pitch you'll throw this year carving out a residence. The pitchers and catchers talk shit about the rest of the team, saying how much more peaceful and quiet it is without those loud motherfuckers, but you know they feel like you do, only a shadow of yourself without an infield to back you up.

Then Mark Mulder asks if you want to get in on the house he's gonna rent in the East Bay for the season, and you say yes without putting too much thought into it. Mulder says awesome and wanders away to pester Zito, and you scratch at the back of your head, kinda discombobulated. You're usually better about thinking before you speak.

Back at the condo that night you're slumped against Bobby on the couch, his feet propped up on the coffee table and his arm over you in that easy way that has become utterly routine. You poke at his hip, distant and preoccupied.

"Hey Bobby," you say, and he goes, "Hm?" absently lifting his hand to card briefly through your hair. You swallow, smile. "Mulder's getting a house again, he wanted to know if I was interested."

Bobby makes another humming sound, most of his attention on _South Park_. You continue, "So are we interested?"

Bobby shrugs, "Yeah, that's cool."

He's not thinking it through, maybe a bad habit the both of you are developing. You wait a minute, then say:

"We'll have to tell him."

That wakes Bobby up, and he gives you a bitch- _crazy_ look that makes you cringe on the inside. You shove your shoulder harder into him, and explain how you wouldn't make it two weeks without getting caught with your hands down each other's pants. It's a miracle you made it through the end of the season last year, but everyone was pretty diverted by the pennant race, so. You tell him all this stuff, all these totally valid reasons, and you feel his arm become tense as a strut as he argues and refuses, a brick-colored flush climbing his face.

He's getting too worked up and you're getting that sick hateful insecure feeling coiling through your stomach again, so you leave it alone. You go get Chinese food menus to distract him, shooting him narrow little glares when he's not looking. You consider withholding sex until he gets the fuck over himself, but that's hardly a viable option for you once he takes off his shirt.

Things are kinda strained for the few weeks. You're irritated with him and trying to keep it from being patently obvious. You keep reminding yourself over and over again, Bobby's not like you, he's not just gay no matter what.

Spring training is well underway and you have teammates to substitute in when Bobby's in a mood. You pal around with Eric Chavez and Mark Ellis and Barry Zito and Mark Mulder, suddenly and starkly at the heart of the team as you invent new card games on the clubhouse floor and hang around in parking lots with the car doors open and the radios blasting. They take you out drinking and you don't tell Bobby you're going, catching a backwards glimpse of him turning down his collar as he watches you leave the stadium. He's scowling, bad visions gouged across his face.

You decide that you are going to get bombed out of your fucking head tonight. The boys are fully on board with this plan, passing you shot after glimmering shot, waving down the girl with the tray of rainbow-colored jello shooters. Your tongue turns bright blue.

A good night all around, and then Mulder comes back to the booth with two girls, some of those lovely interchangeable Phoenix girls with their tans and high-lighted hair. You're all drinking and talking for awhile, Mulder kicking you under the table and you kicking back wondering what the hell his deal is. Mulder's got his arm around one of the girls and you're trying not to think about Bobby. It takes you probably too long to realize that Mark brought the second girl over so you'd have someone to put your arm around too, and as soon as that obvious fact dawns on you, you burst into laughter.

The girls laugh along, confused, and Mulder's got a huge grin on his face but he's stomping on your foot under the table, trying to get you to chill the fuck out. You shake your head, hand over your eyes, unwieldy pressure growing in your chest as you attempt to stop howling with laughter.

You don't know what excuse Mulder makes to get the both of you hauled out of the booth, but anyway, he's herding you over to the wall, his expression exasperated and annoyed even though he's still wearing a smirk. That's just Mulder's default.

"How fuckin' drunk are you?" Mulder demands. "I told Meg you were cool, you're making me look terrible right here."

You let your head fall back on the wall, catching your breath and you're a little bit less hysterical now.

"Mark, you tool," you say. "Don't go setting girls up with gay boys, it's mean."

His eyes go comically wide, and his mouth fishes a couple times before he manages, "You're-"

"Like a three dollar bill, baby. Welcome to the party." You punch his arm, happy to see him just bat you away like usual, no weird flinch or anything.

"Jesus!" Mulder actually wrings his hands, which makes you snicker. "You gotta _tell_ me these things."

"Yeah, that just happened. You all right?" You feel like it's only polite to ask. Mulder shoots you a look, half a sneer.

"Duh. It's just helpful information to have _before_ you go looking for someone to blow your buddy."

You laugh, a normal sound this time, not that mad cackle from before. You almost tell him that there's no need, you get all you can handle at home, but you bite that quickly back because Mulder knows how much time you spend with Bobby and you're certainly not gonna go telling his secrets like they're your own.

Instead you just smack him affectionately upside the head and go back to the table, where you promptly launch a discussion of cute guys on network TV, which Meg and her friend appreciate after the initial surprise, _oh of course_ dawning across their faces. Mulder rolls his eyes, kicks you a few more times under the table just because you're getting all kinds of love from the girls now.

You make sure Mulder knows not to run his mouth as you stand in the street hailing a cab at the end of the night, and he gives you that short-bus look again, says, "I can keep a fucking secret, don't listen to what Hudson says," and you want the story behind that but you also want to get home.

Bobby's still awake, laid full-out on the couch in front of the television, and you crawl on top of him, unsteady with dangerous elbows and knees until he huffs and yanks you down, chinning the top of your head and holding the back of your neck to keep you from squirming.

You exhale against his neck. You tell him, "Mulder knows I'm gay now."

Bobby barely twitches. "What, did you make a pass at him?" he asks without anything showing in his voice, but you're pretty sure it's just a joke.

"Nah. Just told him." You shift your hips over his, settle in more securely. Your hand's over his heart and it seems to be racing slightly.

"Did you," Bobby starts, and then hesitates, his chest hitching. "Was that to, to get back at me?"

"What?" You shove up, try to catch his eyes but he's staring resolutely at the television. You grab his chin and pull his face around and he glowers at you, simmering and faint behind the muted blue of his eyes. "It wasn't about you."

Bobby's lip snarls, not believing that, and he tries to jerk away but you won't let him go, saying sharp, " _Listen_ , you son of a bitch. I haven't gotten to tell anybody in years because I never get to know anybody well enough to trust before I'm off to some new team, and because you distract me a lot of the time anyway. I never intended to keep it a secret from my friends, 'cause I don't make friends with people who'd fucking care. But I know these guys now, I'm gonna be living with them with or without you and I'm not gonna do it lying, so yeah. Yeah I told him."

He pushes you into the back of the couch and gets his legs out, standing quick and running his hands over his hair. His face is all knotted and freaked out, eyebrows up in broken lines.

"Fuck, Richie," he says on a hiss. "You think he's not gonna figure out about me now too, whether or not I live with you guys?"

"I know he will, that's why we should just _tell them_." Bobby's face flashes pure panic for a second, and you hold up your hands. "Not all of them, calm down. The ones we live with, whoever else we spend enough time with outside the ballpark, our friends, that's all."

Bobby's shaking his head, his lips pressed thin. His eyes are darting rabbit-like, scanning for exits, and you get off the couch, go over to take his shoulders in your hands. He's tense, on the verge of flight, but he doesn't shrug you off.

"What the hell are you so worried about?" you ask him. He gives you a look of undiluted disbelief.

"If we get caught, that's all history will remember about us, that's it," Bobby says. "You really wanna go down like that?"

You smile, shake your head because you can't believe he hasn't gotten it yet.

"I couldn't give a fuck about history. Right now is everything I want, can you just understand that already?"

He looks at you for a long moment. searching for something in your face and you don't know what, you don't know how to show it although you're sure it's there, whatever it is; anything Bobby needs you to be, you can be.

After awhile his hands creep up and hitch in your belt and you take that as it's meant, pull him into a kiss. Starts fast and hard because that's how it always starts, but then Bobby gets a hand around the back of your head and slows it down, brings you down to the floor so carefully you feel made of glass. He means something by that, and you try to decipher it but everything is going endless and hot and he's over you and you can't keep your head together.

You and Bobby move with Mulder and Adam Melhuse into a spread-out ranch-style house in Alamo. The kitchen is painted pale lime green and the inside of the hall closet door is almost completely papered over with glittery stickers, Paul Frank and My Little Pony and all manner of girly shit. Mulder says the landlord offered to have the door replaced but he said no way, relishing the looks on people's faces when they went to hang up their coats.

It takes a little bit of maneuvering, but you and Bobby eventually secure the two back bedrooms, big windows facing the sheer hillside. You spend a couple of weeks slipping back and forth in the small hours of the morning, and you don't say anything about how the secret affair thing was totally played before you got out of the minors, because Bobby is getting easier by the hour, his shoulders and back loosening as the days lengthen and warm.

It has a lot to do with baseball, you're sure. Bobby has gotten off to a brilliant start here in his rookie year, all triples and magically deft footwork at short, socks pulled up high and jersey tucked tightly in. During your starts you find yourself checking over your shoulder for him again and again, a step late running to back up first when he starts a double play because your eyes stuck on him for a split second, his hands down and his body moving swiftly.

Nothing can permeate Bobby's good mood. He buys drinks for the whole bar, wants to drive around on the weekends looking for hitchhikers to pick up. You live under his arm, the crook of his elbow fitting against your shoulder, everything perfectly in place.

You're not exactly hiding, but you still never do anything except behind closed doors, and Bobby still keeps a few feet of space between you when you're in less familiar company. Back at the house, drunk and late at night watching _The Soup_ , most of his barriers fall and you can rest your weight against him like normal, flicking at his knee to get his attention.

It's no way to keep a secret, but as long as Bobby's okay, you're okay. You daydream ludicrous scenarios, kissing him on the field in the immediate aftermath of your pennant-winning perfect game, a nationally televised interview where you tell the whole world that the best thing you found in the minor leagues was the shortstop. He inspires the craziest hopes in you.

Then you come home from getting your hair cut and you go around the side of the house because you can hear voices from the pool in the backyard, steady mumbles growing loud as you high-step through the overgrown weeds, pushing through the gate. You come up short just before breeching the patio, hearing Mulder say your name.

"What about him?" and that's Bobby and no way are you interrupting this conversation. You shift your weight silently, lean your shoulder on the side of the house, tipping your head to hear better.

"Well, you know about him and girls," Mulder says, "or, him and not girls, I guess I should say."

You roll your eyes and mime banging your head on the house. Way to keep a secret, Mark, although you know he wouldn't be talking this shit to anyone less than your best friend.

Bobby says, "Yeah," and then there's a pause, a rhythm of minor splashes and leathery thwacks and after a minute you realize they're playing catch in the pool, the scene coming clear to you.

"And he seems to like you an awful lot," Mulder says eventually. So subtly you almost don't notice it yourself, your whole body draws tight.

"I've noticed that too," Bobby answers, sounding totally cool and you wish you could see his face.

Mulder snorts. "You want me to actually ask you, Bobby?"

A longer pause this time, the catch noises gone too, and you picture Bobby holding the ball, hand jammed in his glove, giving Mulder that long considering look that you have gotten from him all too often. You wonder what you'll do if Bobby denies you in this moment, if you will be able to walk away from him like you should.

"No," Bobby says, and the ball cracks hard into Mulder's glove, timed for emphasis. "Apparently we're so obvious even a fucking meathead like you can spot it."

Mulder laughs and it's a lucky thing because so do you, one high note ringing before you clap your hands over your mouth, hunch down into your shoulders. Your chest feels carbonated, seven million tiny little bubbles, and for some reason your eyes are burning with tears. It's a lot to handle.

Mulder says, "Adam told me to ask you, as a matter of fact, so you might as well confirm it for him too."

You roll your head on the house, grinning madly up at the sky. Everybody knows, everybody can see. It shouldn't make you so happy, but fuck it, you're going to anyway.

Bobby misses a throw or Mulder misses a catch, depending on who you're getting the story from, and they complain back and forth about the waterlogged ball, the thwacks denser, sounding like thick hunks of meat hitting a wall. Then Mulder asks Bobby if he likes girls too, and Bobby says:

"I do, I actually like them a lot more than I like guys. It's weird, I just like Richie the most."

You sneak back around the front of the house. You do a stupid victory dance in the driveway, spinning yourself like a top and scuffing dust clouds up into the sunlight.

Everything is amazing for awhile.

Bobby hooks a finger in your belt loop when you're sitting on the counter eating cereal and he's waiting for the coffee to be ready. He slides his pickles onto your plate at diners without you having to ask. When he comes into the dugout after hitting a home run you can see him looking for you, see his grin widen when he catches your eye. You tell Zito about the two of you and he blinks, asks, "Didn't I already know that?"

You drive Bobby's car home when he's wasted one night, drifting and snoring all laid out in the cargo hold. He's usually tyrannical about not letting you drive, protects his Escalade like a child, but he's in no condition to argue. You travel half a dozen feet above the rest of the traffic, on top of the world.

You park in the driveway, turn off the car and crawl between and over the seats to fold yourself down next to Bobby. He's sprawled like a rag doll, legs crooked against the side of the car, and you tap your fingers on his forehead until he blinks his eyes open blearily, a slow grin taking over his face.

"Hey Richie," he breathes out, and reaches for you, a fistful of your shirt and he's pulling you down, leaning up to meet you halfway. You open your mouth against his, immediate and slick and hot, his tongue curling up behind your teeth. He pulls you down on top of him, murmuring and slurring and so drunk you don't think he knows where he is. Bobby has forgotten everything except you.

He gets you spread out under him, sucks you off for about an hour, easy and deep and like there's nothing he would rather do. You have been sleeping with him for better than two years and his mouth is still your go-to fantasy; it's bulletproof.

By the end of it you're drunk by osmosis, and you tug him up your body, your hands feeling like they're missing fingers. He's grinning at you, messy swollen-mouthed grin that does terrible things to your heart.

You say, "It's ridiculous how in love with you I am," and Bobby starts laughing, burying his face in your throat.

"Oh Jesus, Richie, we're in trouble," he manages eventually, hot puffs of breath still hitting your skin as he snickers. You nod, petting the back of his head, smoothing the soft brush of his hair.

"It's kind of overwhelming at first but don't worry, we'll get used to it."

He pulls his head up, gives you a look that you have a hard time reading, and then he says, "You're always so sure everything will work out," and he's not laughing much anymore, just watching you with shadowy careful eyes.

You shrug. "It's much more pleasant than the alternative."

Bobby nods slowly, studying your face intently. You palm his cheek, swipe your thumb along the fine line of his eyebrow. You're smiling at him; you've never stopped.

"You know I'm the same," Bobby says in a very low voice. You nod, not enough room in your chest for all the stuff that's happening.

"Yeah, I know," you tell him, and you kiss him again.

The rest of the year passes in a blur.

You pitch and Bobby plays short and the team is very good until the very end, when everything falls apart a little bit. Mulder, whose late-season injury last year cemented your place in the rotation, can't quite go the distance this season either, his mechanics disintegrating in August and September, his best sliders leaving the yard on the fly. The offense, never much to begin with, crumbles like sandcastles built too close to the water. Bobby's going to win the Rookie of the Year Award, but the league has adjusted to his quick bat, ferreted out the hole on his inside corner, and now his average is shrinking by the day.

It's the first time either of you have played the full one-sixty-two, spring training to October, and it decimates you even though you don't make the playoffs.

The Angels clinch the division on the second-to-last game of the season, beating you on your home field and you are obliged to sit on the dugout bench and watch them celebrating in gray, feeling stupefied and ill with dismay. Zito's a few feet down the bench, covering his face with a white towel, and you don't want to look at him but are compelled by that train wreck thing.

It doesn't fit with the conception of the team you have, brilliant runs through the early fall and then postseason heartbreak because everybody needs a little tragedy in their heroes. You've been trained by movies and the ballpark fables that you have been told all your life, trained to believe that effort and heart are all you need. You know this team; they suffer exactly as they should, silently so that they won't get taken out of the game.

It's just not _right_.

Bobby takes you home. You ask him if he'll get drunk with you and he says absolutely, so there's that to look forward to, at least.

You end up on the living room floor. Mulder's been locked in his bedroom since he got home from the yard, and you conjure up an image of him all depressed thirteen year old girl listening to Cat Power on his big headphones, staring hopelessly up at the ceiling for awhile before writing some black abyss poetry.

You tell Bobby about it and he laughs for about two minutes. You feel fine for a second, and then you remember about the baseball season being over and you get dejected again. You slump, sucking morosely on your beer and thinking that Mulder's inner goth kid has got nothing on you, honestly.

There has to be some safe ground left. You cast about briefly and tell Bobby, "So I was thinking we hang around here until you win the award--knock wood--and all that shit dies down and then you and me get a place in Vancouver or something. Then I can come down to L.A. after Christmas like last year. Acceptable, yes?"

Bobby flicks his hand at you weakly, but you're lying with your head on his stomach so you don't think he's that upset.

"What's all this making plans without committee input," Bobby asks, lazy and not wholly focused.

You twist to look at him, ear flat to his stomach to hear the interesting grumbling sounds. "What were you going to do?"

"Um. Well, follow you back to Canada, I suppose. But that doesn't make it okay."

You reach over, give his cheek a pat. You've almost gotten accustomed to this feeling in the heart of you; you almost don't even shake anymore.

"Sorry, honey, I just figured you were so busy with your bridge club," you say to inject some regularness to the proceedings, and Bobby obligingly serves you a smack, pulls what he can of your short hair. You grin hard, press your teeth against his stomach. "Anyway, I don't really give a shit, we can go to Long Beach first or Tahiti or wherever. You let me know."

Bobby leaves one hand on your abused head, stroking his fingers absently. His other is on your chest, spread out wide.

"Just home for now," Bobby says, and then pretty soon his hand is sneaking under your shirt and he's playing innocently, rubbing at your ear and counting your ribs and getting you worked up in a stealthy mind-fogging way. You end up squirreling on top of him and getting off like you're brand new at it, jeans open and hips pressed flush together, mouth full of his shoulder as if there's anyone around to hear.

Baseball has betrayed you both, but you have the next best thing.

The winter passes in a manner that is becoming routine. You get a roomy one-bedroom apartment in downtown Vancouver, a cramped little house on the hill above San Pedro. There's a view of the industrial harbor, the white Imperial Walkers that do nothing but remind you of Oakland. The weather is gray and cold in Canada, sunny and windy in California. You find excellent falafel places up north, sample the taquitos at every taco truck down south, and the days go by.

In December, just before Christmas, Tim Hudson and Mark Mulder get traded in quick succession, and the aftershocks ring through the rest of the off-season. Bobby basically sets up camp at Barry Zito's house to keep him from going completely off the edge. You tag along, even though you don't really see what Zito's big problem is. The team is going to be _fine_ , no matter who takes the field Opening Day. None of you are the type to stomach defeat on a regular basis; you won't allow it.

You're deeply involved with Bobby, anyway, not much of a sympathetic ear right now but surely you can be forgiven that. You want to keep him in bed until two or three o'clock in the afternoon. You go whole weeks forgetting to call your family or any of your old friends, and you're not trying to be a punk, honestly, you just can't for the life of you think of anyone else with everything you've got already dedicated to your shortstop.

Going to Phoenix is like waking up from a long dream, so intricately developed it's hard to find yourself in the real world again. There are a lot of new guys in camp this year, the guys Mulder and Hudson got traded for and the latest class of shiny new rookies for Billy Beane's never-ending parade.

Mulder and Hudson went for pitching and spare parts. The relievers are going to make the team easy, the hitters not close to ready yet, and there's an eight-man scrum for the three open starting jobs. The whole process is chaotic and cutthroat and awesomely fun to watch for those of you whose spots are already secure. You and Bobby talk about how this would make a fantastic reality show, _Who Wants to Be a Big Leaguer?_ You amuse the hell out of each other and you both keep getting yelled at in team meetings for giggling ("like _girls_ ") instead of paying attention.

Everyone is being very careful to keep expectations as low as possible. Billy Beane actually says the word _rebuilding_ out loud, and the next day the clubhouse feels noticeably depleted of air, slumped shoulders all around, but you get over that. The team comes together, piece by piece.

Danny Haren, who has quickly emerged as the real reason Beane was so hot to get rid of Mark Mulder, falls in with Zito almost immediately. They get along like high school best friends separated for years but finally living in the same city again. They both know three hundred dead baby jokes and it's kind of creepy. Once you and Bobby leave to have sex in the bathroom for the better part of an hour and when you get back Haren's still telling Zito the same pothead anecdote and they haven't even noticed that you were gone.

You know Haren's gonna make the rotation, and you figure Joe Blanton too. Blanton comes with his own sidekick in Nick Swisher, or maybe it's the other way around, you're not sure. The infield's set, and there are too many bats in the outfield but at least some of them can switch-hit. You and Bobby make sure Melhuse is gonna get a house with you again, and start casting around for a fourth, the season shaping up beautifully.

Spring training is almost over. You think it's a Wednesday but you have trouble keeping track of the days of the week when all you play are day games. You go rummaging in your bag for your phone to check, and Huston Street comes up to you.

"Um, Rich?"

"Yeah? Mother _fucker_." You almost rip your hand open on the sprung-loose coil of wire from your notebook. You're not looking up.

"I, I could come back? When you're not having a fight with your bag."

You snort, spare him a glance. The sight of him catches you off-guard every time, though you've gotten better at hiding it; he's perfect-looking in the spookiest way possible, and you don't trust how nice he seems.

"Don't mind me," you say, sucking on your scratched knuckle and giving up on your phone. "Help you with something?"

"Well, I was talking to Danny who was talking to Barry who I guess heard from Bobby that you guys are looking for someone to get a house with? Which I thought was convenient, 'cause I need a place to live."

Street grins encouragingly, and your smile back is automatic, because he's a very pretty boy and you've been very well-trained.

"Yeah, sure," you say and then stop, wonder if you should have given that a little more thought, or at least asked your other roommates. You shrug it off. Adam and Bobby won't care unless Street turns out to be lame, and if he's lame you won't have any problem chucking him out on the street.

You size him up. "You drink, right?"

Street gets affronted. "Of course! Jeez."

"Good. Hm. Living with a rookie, this might be fun."

Having the good sense to get a little worried, Street backs away, saying thanks a couple times. You go to find Bobby and make sure it's okay. Bobby's in the whirlpool, head tipped back, and you forcibly keep your eyes from wandering below his collarbones.

You say, "The kid wants to move in with us," and Bobby squints an eye open, asks, "Huston?" and you say, "Yeah," and he says, "Whatever," closes his eyes again.

So that's taken care of, and you bring your laptop to bed to show Bobby available rentals even though he doesn't care; he's been happy in every crummy place you've lived together, every minor league hotel room and decrepit beach house. Bobby says, "Make sure it's got a roof and a bed, and I'm good."

You call him a peasant, and find a house in Lafayette hidden completely from the road by the lush summer trees, a pool and a quick ride down the hill to the tunnel. The four of you move in on April Fools' Day, but only so far as to get your suitcases and taped-up cardboard boxes hauled into your respective rooms, and then you set about getting hammered as a catalyst for roommate bonding.

Melhuse manages to stay as cagy drunk as he is sober, and you don't learn much new stuff about him, but Street's a different story. He drinks like he's still unused to the novelty of doing it legally, his face flushing and his eyes getting wet and bright, and you are staring until Bobby nudges you, breaks the moment.

Street tells you about his girlfriend and his family and his friends and winning the College World Series and tales from the minors and how this all so amazing, y'all, sincerely. He gets younger the later it gets, his body going slack and his head lolling. Melhuse tells a couple dirty jokes in his dry way and Street almost laughs himself sick, his face all red.

That night, Bobby teases you about the kid. You've zipped together two sleeping bags on the floor of your unfurnished room, and Bobby props his chin on your chest, smirking down at you.

"Never knew jailbait was your thing, Richie, that's kinda not cool."

You box at his ear lightly, scratch your fingers through his hair. "Ah, you can go to hell."

"Seriously, I'm kinda worried over here, man. You ask this kid to move in, you obviously want to bend him over something-"

"First of all, _he_ asked to move in. Second of all, there's gonna be no bending of anybody over _anything_ in this house if you don't watch yourself."

"Yeah yeah." Bobby snorts quietly against your chest, his rough chin scuffing your skin. "Shakin' in my spikes."

Neither of you means anything by it. Bobby still checks out girls all the time, his eyes kinda wistfully hungry when they come up to him in bars, press up against his side for their friends to take a picture. He mutters to you occasionally, "The things I could do to her," and you never mind because his mood is always subjunctive; he never says stuff like that in the future tense.

And for your part, you've hardly stopped being attracted to other guys, and it's hardly your fault that all the available eye candy happens to be on your team. Maybe Zito's huge hands or Eric Chavez's true grin flit through your fantasies sometimes, but you have a good understanding of the human condition and you know that's just the way people's reptile brains work; it doesn't mean anything.

So you can have your harmless little crush on Huston Street, and you can become friends with him just to test it out, see if it'll fade as he comes clearer to you. You stay up all hours with him watching crappy movies bought from the Wal-Mart bargain bins for $5.99. You ride down to get fast food in the middle of the night without bothering to put shoes on.

One night you lock your keys in your car and give the Triple-A guy the wrong highway exit and it takes him two hours to get there. You and Street sit on the car sharing tortilla chips from a white paper bag, talking about baseball, and you act like you're irritated by the delay but really you want to go pull down the street signs so the tow truck will never find you.

You keep Bobby up to date, trying to get him riled for a number of reasons, some more heavily obscured than others. You play it up, "And then we reached for a chip at the same time and our _hands touched_ ," and Bobby can't keep a straight face, breaking into laughter and pulling you down on the bed.

Street is soft-spoken until he gets drunk, and he's had politeness drilled into him from a young age, to the point where half the stuff he says trails upwards at the end like a question, always making sure it's okay. You would usually find that annoying--just take a goddamn _stand_ , for Christ's sake--but Street manages to make it pretty endearing.

He knows a shitload about college football and is a total nerd for Texas state history. He actually _is_ as nice as he seems. In May, Octavio Dotel goes down with an injury and Huston Street, a twenty-one year old freak just like you used to be, becomes the team's closer. By then he's already one of the best friends you've made since Bobby Crosby.

Which is why it takes you by surprise when Bobby asks you, "Have you told Huston about you and me yet?" and you realize that you haven't.

Worse than that, the idea of it makes something wrench uncomfortably in your gut. You don't _want_ to tell Huston, and you're unnerved suddenly.

"No," you tell Bobby. "I. It's never come up."

Bobby glances at you before returning his eyes to the television, where you are fighting as samurais. His knee bumps against yours, the ticky-tap of your thumbs on the controllers and the trippy game music serving as the only background.

"Uh, I don't think it's ever gonna come up unless you bring it up," Bobby points out. "This was your big thing, gotta be honest with our friends or whatever the fuck it was."

You shrug, shift your weight. Your samurai loses an arm in a gout of vibrant red. "I, I don't know, man. You know he's hella religious and shit, he's from Texas, I just, I'm not a hundred percent on him yet."

Bobby's eyebrows raise, but he doesn't look at you, his samurai systematically hacking the rest of your limbs off. You are jamming the button to block, squeezing it hard against the plastic.

"He just goes to church like most of the rest of the world, I don't think he's hella anything. And I thought you didn't make friends with people who'd care," Bobby says, and you flinch.

"I don't."

Bobby shoots you a sidelong glance, then shrugs. "'kay."

He chops off your head, tosses the controller on the coffee table, gets to his feet and stretches long, his back popping. You eye the cut plane of his stomach where his shirt is pulled up, seeing the edge of the mark you sucked into the hollow of his hip last night.

"Hey Bobby let's fuck," you say, and he smiles down at you, shakes his head.

"Not tonight, honey, I've got a headache," he says, and you are almost certain that he's just fucking with you.

You carry on. You spend a lot of time with Street but even more with Bobby, and you sort out your crush eventually. It doesn't fade exactly, but instead kind of dims and fits itself into your basic affection for Street. He's a friend first, and then sometimes the light catches him right or he strikes out the side or something, and you remember that it would be awesome to fuck him, and you're able to leave it there, _it would be awesome_ , never letting the thought mutate into _goddamn I wish I could_ , or _why the fuck shouldn't I_.

You have things well in hand. You have Bobby still, every night and all day long, and you make sure he knows that prettyboy closers aside, you only have eyes for your shortstop.

The team starts off playing so poorly you want to hide your face from the television cameras. Bobby goes on the shelf almost immediately with a pair of broken ribs and you don't know what to do without him behind you. You look over your shoulder and see Marco at short and your next pitch sails fat and ripe down the heart of the plate. You get so frustrated, the stupidest little things going wrong on the field and costing you whole games. Oakland is in last place, a dozen games under .500. The rigid burn of objectless anger that you mostly shook off back in Double-A sneaks back under your skin, but you're older and more mature now and you know to throw your fits in the trainer's room, not the dugout.

Bobby says it's all very nostalgic, but if you fuck up your hand punching something he might not be able to be seen with you anymore. It's a pretty good threat, but you actually straighten up when he points out that Zito's keeping his shit together better than you are, and you obviously can't let that stand.

And then Bobby patches up, lifting weights in the garage and swimming in a diligent and measured way. He gets back enough strength to pin your hands to the headboard and fuck you blind, and you grin in dazy contentedness after, conjuring up images of him turning waltz-like double plays sometime in the near future. Bobby comes back towards the end of May, and your tethers are cut. The team starts playing insanely well, and for a couple weeks everyone calls Bobby 'Sparky.'

The summer is torn up in front of you, ripped like confetti. Everyone's hitting all of a sudden, and Haren's pitching better than you and you're pitching better than Blanton and Blanton's pitching better than Zito and none of you are pitching badly, not even close. You chase down the Angels all through the brightening season, and finally eke your way into first place, just as the calendar flips to August.

It's a desperately fragile thing, a sculpture made of the thinnest glass. You don't want to think about the run your team is on because if you think about it too much you'll start doubting it, and you learned really young that doubt is always a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Instead, you fill your days with pranks and mischief, plotting in hotel stairwells with your allies and always keeping an eye out for potential double crosses. You carry a loaded squirt gun hidden under your shirt and sneakily take shots at the guys when they're not watching. You help distract Bobby when Zito's trying to cheat at cards, just because you like seeing Bobby get all wound up and scowly.

You come home from a road trip at the tail end of summer, trailing remnants of joy because it's been an incredible year. You share a cab with your roommates and you are sitting bitch in back between Bobby and Street, the totally normal feel of your and Bobby's hips wedged together, the crisp awareness of Street's bony elbow rubbing yours. You're feeling unrealistically good, like you've been flung up into the sky.

You all tumble out at your house, and Melhuse says he's gonna go take a shower and Street says something about calling his girlfriend, and then they're both gone. You toe off your shoes and suddenly Bobby's got a hand on your stomach, pushing you up against the wall and kissing you on the mouth.

A surprised noise, half a laugh, and then you fold against him, tilt your head to the side and open your mouth. You're both grinning into the kiss, Bobby braced on his arm against the wall and taking his time, taking everything he can get from you.

Street's door slams so hard the walls vibrate, and you both jolt, peel apart. Bobby's eyes are big and his face is all lit up, and he twists a hand in your collar, pulls you down the hallway. Bobby waits until he's got a locked door between you and the rest of the world, and then takes your shirt off for you, presses the flats of his hands to your bare shoulders.

"What do you say, Richie?" Bobby asks with a minor smile. "You think this is our year?"

You nod too fast, well on your way to senseless, and you're jinxing the hell out of it, saying, "Of course, of course."

But September is still the cruelest month and some small strain of exhaustion begins to infect the team, creeps in through the cracks in your veneer, the hairline fractures traced like veins. The stupid little mistakes come back, lint-sticking no matter what you do to try and shake them. The team slips out of first place like half-waking from a dream and then falling back asleep again.

Street is taking it poorly, shuttering himself away in his room and staring sightlessly at magazines in the clubhouse instead of talking to any of his teammates. Zito says Street is suffering a quarter-life crisis and Danny just wants to get him drunk. You and Bobby both know about how a magnificent rookie year can cripple you if it ends too soon, and so you throw water balloons at Street from the roof of your house, and you buy packs of Klondike bars for him to smear all over his mouth like a five year old.

None of it helps much. Street retreats, sinking away from everyone but you feel like he's avoiding you especially, although that might just be your ego talking. He doesn't meet your eyes anymore, darting jerky glances here and there and not smiling. You can't figure out what you've done, and when you ask Bobby, he only says, "Fuck him, moody little punk."

Street has been leaving rooms as soon as you enter them, cold hollow feeling in your stomach every time you watch him do it, but he's distracted by country music videos and that new fog of absented pain all around him, and he doesn't notice until you plop down on the couch next to him.

You ask him if his girlfriend dumped him and he says no; you ask him if his dog died and he looks horrified, clutching his elbows in his hands. You're uneasy and more concerned than you've been so far, because Street is about to start hyperventilating or something, and you don't know what you've _done_.

You say, "Well, then, why're you all-" and he cuts you off quick, snapping:

"I don't want to talk about it, man, 'specially not with _you_."

Street's face drops open, shocked at himself, and then warps, wincing with regret, but you don't want to hear him apologize, anger and a random jag of mortification taking up all your available space.

"What the fuck does that mean, especially not with me? What the fuck did I do?"

He's shaking his head tight and fast, compulsive, and shoving to his feet. Street's face is redder than you've ever seen it, and he's running away like a fucking coward, and you wonder how the fuck you could have ever thought he was worth your time.

That's just the moment, though, it's just because for some reason Street hates you now and you are the type of person who automatically hates back. It almost never happens, it probably why. Almost everyone you've ever met has liked you, and Street was definitely in their company like a _week_ ago. You keep trying to think of what you could have possibly done to cause this.

You hunt down Adam Melhuse, who is secretly the eyes and ears of the whole team, blending in effortlessly in that back-up catcher sort of way, keeping watch on all of them and bearing impartial witness.

"Have I gotten weird recently?" you ask him. Melhuse doesn't look at all surprised at the question, giving it a careful moment of thought.

"No more than usual," he decides eventually.

"Haven't been, like, sleep-talking shit about your mom, or anything?"

Melhuse actually stops and thinks about that one too, and you lean against the kitchen counter with your arms crossed, smirking at him.

"That's the kind of thing that sticks with a person, so I'm gonna go with no again," he tells you.

You exhale a frustrated breath, go into the fridge for a beer. "Want?" Adam nods and you toss him a can, saying, "Soft hands, soft hands," and of course he's got that going for him, so the can doesn't even spurt a little when he cracks it open.

"Huston doesn't like me anymore," you say, and then you feel really dumb, staring at your feet.

"That appears to be the case, yes."

"He won't tell me _why_. If I fuckin' knew--I mean you gotta give a guy a chance to apologize or make it up or something, right?" You scowl at the floor, feeling bitter and hard-done-by. "Unless he's just fucking nuts. You think we woulda picked up on that sometime in the last six goddamn months."

"Well. Maybe some reconnaissance is in order, then."

You look up, hike your eyebrows and make a little grin. "Would ya, Adam?"

Melhuse waves his hand, something faintly regal in the gesture. "For you, my son, the world."

You've got pretty cool friends.

It's a couple days later that Melhuse reports back. You and Bobby are on his bed watching shit on Youtube, and he comes in, shuts the door behind him. One look at Melhuse's face is enough to get you to mute the laptop. He's pissed off but also kinda disappointed and sad and you don't know which is worse.

"So I talked to the kid," Melhuse says. He's looking at the both of you, and you experience a dull thud of foreboding because there's no reason to include Bobby in this, it's not Bobby's problem.

But then Adam says, "He saw you guys," and Bobby freezes because it just became his problem too.

You sag back against the headboard, swallowing hard. "That's it? Just 'cause of, of-"

" _What_ did he see?" Bobby interrupts, voice ground down low and dangerous. Melhuse shakes his head.

"I didn't get the details, man. Probably nothing much, you keep it behind closed doors pretty good. But fuck, I've still seen you making out at least three times. Never mentioned it, of course, being the soul of discretion and all, but there ya go."

Bobby buries his face in his hands and you certainly don't need _that_ right now. You grab the back of his neck, give him a hard get-it-together shake, but he just pushes you off. Your hand closes into a fist and falls to your leg, and you lock your eyes on Melhuse, ignoring Bobby if that's how wants it.

"And he said, what, is he like disgusted now, is he gonna move out or something?"

Your voice cracks slightly but you blame it on the stress. Bobby presses his elbow into your side and you push back.

Melhuse shrugs, looking stymied. "I think if he was gonna, he woulda already. And I don't think he thinks you're, like, evil or something, he just said you shouldn't be--you know. Like he was sad about it, but not mad."

You shake your head, like that fucking matters. Like Street wanting to weep for your poor hell-bound soul is any better than Street wanting to kick the shit out of you for liking dick. It all comes back to the same thing, Street getting up and walking out of rooms as soon as you walk in.

"Motherfucking _Texas_ ," you snarl. Melhuse smirks.

"Now, now, let's not reverse-discriminate," he chides, and then stops, tips his chin up. "Why didn't you tell him? You told everybody else that counts."

It's your turn to freeze, your mouth open but nothing coming out. You can feel Bobby's gaze hot on your face and you can't look at him, you don't want to see it.

Melhuse takes pity on you after a moment, shrugging again and looking away. "I mean, I guess you were right not to. I just never expected this out of him, you know? He's such a good kid."

"Yeah," you say without thinking, and then, "Except maybe not so much."

You glance at Bobby and he's glaring down at his hands, a strained line dug across his forehead, his mouth forced into a tight bow. You really aren't looking forward to hearing his reaction to all this.

Melhuse says, "So, yeah," and asks if you want to go to the good Mexican place for dinner and you say no because you might never eat again; your stomach feels a tenth of its right size, shriveled and hard as a pit.

Melhuse thoughtfully closes the door behind him, and you and Bobby sit there in silence for a moment, not looking at each other. There is a coring sensation searing through you, stinging in your eyes and the back of your throat and making you want to throw up and throw yourself into a wall and after a second you identify it with a dawning sense of horror: it's _shame_.

Huston Street has made you ashamed.

"Jesus Christ, I might have to beat him up," you hear yourself saying as if from very far away.

Bobby shoves the laptop aside and gets to his feet. He runs his hands over his hair a few times, scrubbing hard across his face.

"Shut up, Richie," he says, making something jag painfully in your chest.

"What the fuck?" you demand, and Bobby shoots you a brief hateful look over his shoulder that has you recoiling, hissing silently between your teeth.

"I took your word that he was a good guy when you let him move in. You didn't want to tell him so he found out by accident, and now look what's happened."

You clench your hands in the bedcovers, your eyes gaping and over-dry, fury writhing around directionless inside your body. "You never wanted to tell _anyone_ -"

"Yeah, a fucking year and a half ago," Bobby snaps back. "But I've come around to it, haven't I? Because it was like you said, only the guys we _trusted_. And if you didn't trust him then what the _fuck_ is he doing here? You want to suck his cock that badly, man, you coulda just fuckin' said."

You just stare at him for a few moments, feeling dumbstruck and small and betrayed on an epic scale. Bobby is breathing heavily like after his sprints but it's just emotion, adrenaline, color on his face and manic pieces of silver glittering in his eyes. His lip is sneered and there is a part of you that knows he is absolutely right. This is pretty much all your fault, you and that stupid pointless crush you once had.

You clap your laptop shut and get to your feet, serving Bobby the coldest glare you can summon. He sends it right back, chilling you.

"Fuck off and die, Bobby," you say because you have to say something, and something breaks on his face as you slam the door behind you.

Locked in your own room, the dresser shoved in front of the door because you're feeling melodramatic, you crashland into panic for a few minutes, a completely foreign country in which to find yourself. You have always been so sure of yourself, notched into the world with such a good fit. You never assume the worst about people and you have this basic faith that it comes back to you in kind, and all those assholes out there who like to concern themselves with who you fuck, you've never bothered to worry about them because you've never cared about any of them.

And now you've known Huston Street for half a year and a little while ago he was one of your best friends.

You wonder who he's going to tell. You compose headlines and breaking news alerts on ESPN in your head, and hope you'll have a chance to warn your parents before reporters start calling. You talk a pretty good game about not giving a fuck, but you've never had your junk discussed on talk radio, so who knows what it'll do to you. Maybe that's a little far-fetched, rather more grandiose a revenge than Street could plausibly orchestrate. But he could get drunk in thirty different cities and make poorly-disguised suggestive remarks until every ballplayer in the game knows about those two fuckin' faggots out there in Oakland. It's more passive-aggressive, but it would certainly get the job done.

You turn on the television and scan around until you find a Braves game on TBS, and you turn it up, letting the normal baseball game sounds calm you down. You're getting overexcited, fanciful and paranoid. It takes a couple of innings, but you get your heartrate down and you get a more reasoned perspective on things.

Street is not going to fuck you over. You're not that bad a judge of character; you wouldn't have survived this long, not with the mouth you've got on you. You can see Street staging an intervention to cure you of your sinner's ways, but never discussing your business with a third party because, well, that would just be rude.

He'll never be your friend again, that's pretty much a given. It sticks in your throat for a minute, makes something throb dense and blistering under your ribs. You were getting used to him being around, all _gosh_ and _jeez_ and hilarious drunk faces, his statements that sound like questions and the way his eyes shine like high-beams when he comes in to take the ball from you.

You unearth the emergency bottle of Jack that you keep in the bottom of your road trip bag, and drink until you feel more numb than anything else. Some redneck singer yowls in a truck commercial and you throw a shoe at the screen, a feral barbed-wire smile twisted across your mouth. You're thinking, _fuck him if he doesn't like it, fuck him, fuck him_ , and you're gonna get drunk enough to believe it.

It's good for many things, the coming drunk, not the least of which is that you can't let yourself think about Bobby just yet; you can't touch that part of it. You wish he hadn't turned around and blamed it on you, even if he had a right. It was a kick in the slats when you were already down, and you've earned better than that from him. You wish you hadn't told him to fuck off and die. But you can't think about that now.

Drunken stupor gets you through that night, and then the hangover conveniently consumes you up until it's time to crawl out of bed and go to the ballpark. Bobby's car is already gone from the driveway and you choke down some cornflakes, thinking about how it's been a month since the two of you didn't share a ride to the yard.

Once you're ensconced in the stadium, it's pretty much business as usual, Street pinned to the wall as far away from you as the room allows, your teammates obnoxious and blasting terrible rap music that just makes you deeply embarrassed to know them. Bobby's nowhere to be seen, probably shut himself up in the cages or with the trainers or something. He'll be much better than Street at avoiding you; he knows your routines better than you do.

The whole idea makes you want to crawl under your bed, build a fort to keep the wicked world out. You can't stand Bobby looking at you like he hates you; it's going to kill you.

You hide in the clubhouse during the game, collaring Zito and getting him to show you some guitar stuff so you'll have an excuse if anyone ever asks. You eat a quick dinner off the spread and leave as soon as you can, fighting off a disturbing sense of running away. There is a second-run theatre in San Leandro and you pay for the eleven o'clock, then sneak into the midnight showing so that you'll have a place to stay for a little while longer.

You can't remember what movies you see. You can't even remember if it was two different movies, something about space monkeys and something about spooky kids with super powers and you're barely even here. You're turning your phone over and over in your hands, waiting for it to come to life.

It seems entirely reasonable to think that Bobby might leave you over this. You've prodded him along every step of the way, answered every concern he raised with a facile, "Don't worry it'll be okay," and look where that's left you, no idea what to do once things turn out not-okay. You try to imagine not talking to him anymore, never getting your hands on him again, and you start to shake so bad you have to hunch over your knees with your head in your hands. You'd rather be diagnosed with terminal cancer.

After the movie you go to an all-night diner in Hayward for an hour or so, until they say you have to order more than coffee or get the hell out. So you get the hell out, stumbling home past three in the morning and thinking that that coffee was unforgivably stupid; you'll never sleep now,

You weren't really intending to, anyway, you know this won't let you rest. A constant pulse of anger runs through everything else, a great baffling sense of savage injustice, because you are a good guy ninety-seven percent of the time and you don't know what you did to deserve this. You love your family and your friends and your boy, you're always trying to make them laugh. You play as hard as you can and you never act like a dick to umpires or throw real heat when you're brushing someone back. You say please and thank you to cashiers and waiters, you hold open doors for the people behind you, you never pretend that panhandlers are invisible. Maybe you do stupid things sometimes but there is no malice in you at _all_ , and none of this is in any way fair.

All you've done is believe that Huston Street is a better man than he's turned out to be, and it makes you want to punch walls, that something so small could have these kinds of consequences.

You get home and everybody's cars are in the driveway. You don't want to see any of them, but it's so late it's early and you probably don't have to worry about it. The motion-lights over the garage flick on as you come up to the house and you flinch with your whole body, pure terror for a minute thinking a nuclear bomb has been dropped.

The house is dark and still, and you toe off your sneakers into the pile by the door, miss the hook trying to hang up your coat and it crumples to the floor. You go to the bathroom and drink four cups of water, gasping and wet-faced by the end, and then you go to bed.

Bobby's already there.

He's asleep all burrowed away under the covers like normal, and you don't notice until you've stripped to your shorts and slid in on your side, your leg bumping his and making you start, grunting in surprise. Bobby twitches awake, batting the covers off his head and rolling to face you. You're half-lying down, blinking at him and wondering if you've fallen asleep in the movie or something, if you've just made it a lucid dream.

"Hey," Bobby says, husk and rasp and sleep-thick, and you swallow with a click. "Fuckin' time's it?"

You force your muscles to give, stretching the rest of the way out beside him. You're trying to figure out what it means, him in your bed just a few hours before dawn, but you're very tired and made worse by the simple sight of him with pillow-creases on his face and heavily-lidded eyes. You don't want to think anymore about it tonight.

"It's late, go back to sleep," you tell him, and take a risk, put your hand on his hip. He doesn't seem to find it strange, nodding and cracking his jaw on a yawn.

"Didn't think you were gonna come home," Bobby mumbles, eyes almost all the way closed now.

You get a better grip on his hip, slide yourself closer subtle and slow. All the scattered pieces of your life draw together again as if Bobby's the magnet that joins you. You bump your forehead on his shoulder, push your arm over him and he only sighs, shifting to accommodate you.

"Sorry," you say very quietly, and his breathing doesn't change, his chest rising easily under your arm.

"'s not your fault he's a jerk," Bobby tells you in that wrecked voice of his. "We'll be okay."

You squeeze your eyes shut, a smile on your face but it feels chipped, carved out of marble. It's a kind thing for Bobby to say and you love him for it. You'd like to believe it wholly without reservations, but you know better than to hold people accountable for things they say when it's almost four in the morning.

But you'll be able to sleep now, at least.

The next couple days you and Bobby move gingerly around each other. You play videogames side by side but you both have your iPod headphones in so you don't have to talk. You bring him Cokes in the clubhouse and he makes sure to get you a peanut butter cookie from the spread if he gets there first, because the peanut butter cookies always go quickest. You sleep in the same bed but don't fool around. There's a weird post-traumatic stress feeling between the two of you, like you barely survived a gruesome car crash or something, and now neither of you quite trusts the safety and solidity of the other.

You're going to have to talk to Street, you know. You wait until the team goes on the road, so that Street will have at least a week to get over it before you have to live in the same house as him again. He skips out on dinner with the team, claiming exhaustion, and you spend the whole meal feverishly writing confrontation scenarios in your mind. Bobby gives you knowing looks, hooks a finger in your belt loop under the table. Back at the hotel, you do a couple shots with Zito in the bar, and then go upstairs, throw your button-down into your room and go knock on Street's door in your shirtsleeves.

It takes him awhile to answer, and you worry that he's spotted you through the peephole and is just going to leave you hanging, but when he finally gets the door open he looks befuddled enough that you think he was actually asleep. You lean against the door on the opposite side of the hallway, give him a long look.

"Adam says you've got a problem."

He darts his eyes at you, vaguely frantic, and says, "I do not."

"Really? Because it's not like anyone would blame you for freaking out a little bit. I mean, it's not every day you find out your roommates are fucking."

You say it to shock him and it mostly works; he grabs you and hauls you into the room before the last word is all the way out of your mouth. His look of childlike fear as he scans the hall and shuts the door, all huge eyes and flickering hands, strikes you as hysterical, and you start laughing, falling onto the bed.

Street wants to know what the hell your problem is, but you can't believe him, you can't believe someone could be so distraught over something so regular and unremarkable as you being gay. You have _always_ been gay, it's not like Street was pals with some fake breeder version of you.

But now he's looking at you with his hands half-raised like he wants to be in position to defend himself, and your stomach turns rottenly, laughter scraping to nothing. You sit up, bracing your hands on the bed, glare at him and he takes a step backwards without even realizing it.

"You could stop looking like I'm gonna kill you, Huston, and that'd be good."

Street rips his eyes off you, throat moving fast and his trembling hands reaching for his bag. He shakes his head and bites his lip, starts unpacking his stuff into the dresser drawers while you watch in disbelief.

He tells you, "Adam got it wrong, okay, I'm fine."

Your mouth curls in a nasty smirk. "Right. So you're unpacking even though we're leaving tomorrow. Nice."

Street's face goes a deep red color, but he doesn't answer and he doesn't stop, separating his socks from his T-shirts and you want to grab him and _shake_ him, just rattle some sense into the motherfucker and snap him out of it.

"Never took you for the type, man," you say in a weakened tone.

Street catches your eyes in the mirror for a split second, his face tortured and holding back and then he's looking away, not saying anything, and anger wins out in you, bolting through so fast. You don't fucking _deserve_ this.

"Like, sorry if we've fucked with your expectations or whatever, but your expectations are not exactly our responsibility. Me and him, we came _first_. We fucking pre-date you."

You pull in a hard breath and you're staring at Street's turned back and not calming down at all.

"I don't know where you get the fucking balls, man, to act like we're fucking _beneath_ you or something, like I was only your friend so long as I didn't make you uncomfortable, like, so fucking _sorry_ , hate to fucking bring you down. Not gonna leave him because you've got a problem with it, can't believe you think I would. You and him are just fucking miles apart, you think I've missed you the way I'd miss him?"

It's too much, more than you really wanted to get into, but your heart is pounding and your face is flushed and your hands are wrenched in fists in the bedspread. Maybe you're a little more screwed up about this whole thing than you've let yourself know. You want Street to fucking _look_ at you. How can he hate you because of this, how could you have misplayed him so badly? You liked him, you liked him a whole fucking lot, and now it's all fucked.

Street stops your cruel rant, raising his eyes to yours in the mirror with what looks like a great deal of effort. He says, "Hey, hey, you're right," and you come up short, blinking. You were just running your mouth.

"I am?"

Turning to face you, Street keeps a hand clutching the dresser, holds your eyes steadily enough. He looks scared to death but determined, a taut hollow in his cheek where his teeth are clenched. "I'm being dumb."

You narrow your eyes, thinking he might just be trying to get rid of you. You don't want a Band-Aid, you want to get this fucker _fixed_. "Little bit, yeah."

He flits a hand through the air, doing his level best to look casual and it's a pretty pitiful attempt, all things considered. "You and him, it's great."

You barely manage to keep from busting up laughing again, scowling to keep your expression from betraying you. You release your death grip on the covers, try to keep your voice neutral as you say:

"Don't go zero to sixty, man. Take some time to adjust."

"I'm adjusted," Street says quickly. You lift an eyebrow and ask him if he's gonna be weird anymore, but in the same moment Street's saying, "You love him?" and you blanch, turn your face away.

You're embarrassed, you don't talk about that sort of thing with anybody. You only very rarely talk about it with Bobby; it's too delicate for the air, is the problem.

Shaking his head so fast you're worried he's gonna tweak something, Street is saying, "Never mind, sorry, sorry," and it gets quiet.

Street is still acting so jumpy, so awkward and out of place, and you honestly don't know what to think. You figure he's telling you what you want to hear to get you out of the room, and then you wonder why he would care if you loved Bobby, if maybe that would make it okay for him. Jesus Christ talked a lot more about love for your fellow man than he did about stoning homosexuals, after all, and maybe Street has his priorities in better order than you're giving him credit for.

You sigh. All that's wishful thinking, you can admit it. Street probably just asked out of morbid curiosity or something.

"Look," you tell him, watch him flinch at the sound of your voice. "I just wanted to make sure that we're cool. It shouldn't change anything, because it's always been like this, you just never knew."

Street nods, biting the corner of his lip for a second before he pastes a smile across his face. It doesn't fit at all, and your stomach lurches as he says, "We're cool, Richie. I, I am sorry."

And you want to know what he's apologizing for specifically, because you feel like there are at least four different things it could be, but Street is making a break for it before you can ask, talking loudly about how he missed dinner and is now considering cannibalism and you follow him out of his room into the hallway, feeling simultaneously better and worse about the whole mess.

Things get back to mostly-normal pretty quickly. Street visibly forces himself to stay in your vicinity more often, and maybe you don't do anything more than painstakingly exchange small talk with him, but at least he looks at you sometimes. Burned, bitten, and shy, you retreat to Bobby, get him to suck you off until you're convinced that at least _he_ still likes you.

You've been shoved off-balance, but you work around it. You continue to pitch even though the campaign is getting more futile by the day. There's romance in suffering for a losing cause, and you believe that right up until Bobby breaks his ankle.

It's collision at the plate, a slide that Bobby should have hooked more, the swiftest moment of dislocation. He throws his head back so hard his batting helmet comes off, choke-screams up at the sky. You are halfway up the dugout steps when Danny Haren gets hold of the back of your jersey and drags you back to the bench. He keeps a heavy hand on your shoulder until you shake your head briskly and sit back, watching helplessly as the trainers oh-so-carefully pick your boy up off the dirt.

Bobby claims it's nothing, doesn't even really trust the X-ray that shows the fracture thinner than angel hair. He says, "I've played hurt worse than this, swear to god I have," and then the coaches are muttering indecipherably as you strain your ears to hear. Eric Chavez catches you eavesdropping when he comes out of the video room, pulls you away while telling you, "You'll never hear what you want if you go listening at doors."

Bobby hits the disabled list for the second time that year, but he's in complete denial about it, staggers around the house without his crutches until you want to tie him to the couch. He snaps at you when his ankle hurts and he doesn't want to admit it. You snap back because you hate seeing him like this, hobbled and useless, and then you end up yelling at each other until Melhuse comes out of his room to bodily separate the two of you.

Just a week and a half after the collision, you catch Bobby taping up his ankle in his bedroom, his glove and bat near at hand. You block the doorway, fix him with a glare.

"The fuck do you think you're doing?"

Bobby gives you a look like maybe you're a little slow. "Gonna go down to the yard and put in some time in the cages."

"That's funny, man," you say, bracing one hand against the doorframe. "One-legged dude hitting off a tee, make sure someone gets a video of it on their phone, would ya? I definitely wanna see that shit."

He makes a humorless smile, gets to his feet and it's only because you know him so well that you can see how he tips his weight towards his good side, an infinitesimal wince pinching his face.

"Always happy to amuse you," Bobby says, and shoulders his bat, glove hanging off the top. "You mind getting out of the goddamn way?"

"Yeah I fuckin' mind," and you push him backwards, harder than you necessarily intended but he gets you so worked up. Bobby goes stumbling backwards and jams his ankle, crying out in pain and you could have happily lived your whole life never hearing that sound from him.

"What the _fuck_ , Richie." Bobby's hands are white-knucked on the handle of his bat, held at a murderous angle but you're not scared of him at all.

"You can't even walk, you're gonna go to the cages, that's great, just fuckin' awesome."

Bobby scoffs a harsh noise, sneering at you. "Not everyone's as big a pussy as you are, all right? Some of us can play through the pain."

"Yeah, until you make it worse. You really that eager to get under the knife? You want to fucking kill yourself? Just stay _down_."

Bobby's face flashes, looks at you with this furious wounded expression like you've turned on him viciously and without cause or warning. You don't know what he means, looking at you like that, making that cold closing thing happen in your stomach. It's only a second and then Bobby's face shutters and becomes blank, chilling.

"Get the hell out of my way," Bobby says in a nothing voice, and you do what he tells you. You watch him limp away down the length of the hall, your heart giving a little bit every time his stride does.

A few days later Bobby runs ninety-foot stretches, back and forth, skid-stopping his feet and dropping one hand to the dirt to switch directions. You're watching from the tarp roll, seeing how he's scraped the skin off one knuckle, single bright spot of red that he doesn't even know is there. It's a pretty good effort but the coaches are still not convinced, so Bobby bounces in place for them, shows how he's learned to throw off his right foot, just a little more sidearm and he can find the first baseman almost every time.

Bobby's eyes are silvery and agonized the whole time, his mouth a carved line, but apparently everybody else on your team is fucking _blind_.

They put him back in the line-up. You can't believe it.

You take Zito out and get him drunk and then rail for awhile about how this goddamn team chews you up and spits you out, because nobody ever stays in Oakland forever and so they don't give a fuck. You've thrown tens of thousands of hundred mile an hour fastballs just for fun and no one ever told you to maybe go easier so you can still do it when you're thirty. Zito pays his rent on a lollipop curve that could blow out his elbow at any given moment and it's some kind of miracle that it hasn't happened yet, and still the trainers would rather hop him up on prescription-strength Sudafed than let him miss a start that one time he caught a cold. Mulder and Huddy had proven defective after years of hard use and were summarily gotten rid of, and you're not gonna let the same thing happen to Bobby; you're not gonna let him be another casualty of this insane lifelong war you've all chosen to wage.

You might have a point buried in there somewhere. Zito's gaping, fascinated and totally clueless as to what the fuck you're on about, and you wave your hand, scowling at your beer.

"He just shouldn't be playin' yet, is all," you finish in a mutter.

Zito shuts his mouth, nods and tries to look thoughtful, which works about as well for him as it ever does. He theorizes that the possibility of October is providing the necessary pain-masking endorphins, but you shake your head and dismiss that out of hand. You hear yourself saying:

"So what? I don't care if he's got a good reason, it's too fucking risky no matter what."

Zito allows that you're probably right, but he's just drunk and agreeable and you don't get any kind of satisfaction out of it. You finish the pitcher and then pour Zito into a cab with his address scribbled on a cocktail napkin and tucked in his shirt pocket because sometimes Zito gets mixed up between different places he's lived when he's really drunk.

You walk about a mile in the direction of the hills before you get irritated with the fresh night air and clean-looking sky, and call a cab to pick you up from wherever the hell you are. You're frustrated, kinda despondent, because you can't think of anything to do if Bobby won't listen to you. It's like a sixty-foot stone wall, shot up from the earth directly in front of you.

The door to Bobby's room is shut when you get back. You stand in the hallway shifting from foot to foot and wondering if you're gonna knock. You think about how you shouldn't have to knock; it's been more than three years.

You end up going to bed alone. You actually sleep really well that night, thick and dreamless.

Bobby plays short for the last few weeks of the season, and it doesn't make a difference. There's no spark this time, no glorious final run to be spurred out of your team, and Anaheim clinches the West with five days left to play. Everyone limps off the field, and you can't tell the physical pain from the emotional.

You are maybe not handling things so great. The past month has been very tough on you, numbness spreading out from your arm and colonizing your whole body. You've been avoiding Bobby by day and having increasingly angry sex with him by night, split into thinner and thinner pieces every time you see the marks he's left in the morning, the bruises on the insides of your thighs. You spend whole games clinging to the rail waiting for him to scream in pain again, and you can't talk to him without shouting so you just slip into his bed and take what you need, slip out once he's faking sleep and go back to your own room all shuddery and cold.

It's after you've been knocked out of the chase, still the better part of a week to play and you don't know how you'll bear it. You get home drunker than you intended to get, still pretty early because the light is on under Melhuse's door and you can hear Street banging around in the kitchen and humming Dwight Yoakam.

Bobby's gone. You don't know where; he doesn't tell you things anymore. The sight of his half-open door, the dark wedge of his room revealed, is for some reason the last straw for you, and you fold down, back against the wall and knees pulling up against your chest. You rest your head carefully on your kneecaps and weave your fingers together behind your neck, having made yourself as small as physically possible.

You stay like that for awhile. You have a fair amount of luck not thinking about any of the things that you have lost recently.

Footsteps approach from the kitchen, and you tune in, hear Street pause, floorboards creaking under carpet. After a second he coughs rather unsubtly. You smirk into the shadowy crevice formed by your legs and chest.

"What."

Street doesn't answer, and you can picture him with that big-eyed pleading look on his face, nervous little smile he gets when he can't think of the words. You miss him, suddenly and with a ferocity that takes you aback. Street always has trouble saying what he means, getting it wrong the first couple of times and digging himself into deep holes, but even when he's talking nonsense he still improves the situation just by stammering and being inadvertently hilarious.

"I don't want to play anymore," you say, because you cannot say any of the stuff about Bobby and you won't apologize to Street so that he'll be your friend again (you owe him nothing), but baseball is still safe. Baseball is where you turn when everything else has let you down.

Street stays quiet, and you're very grateful for that. You ask him to stay and even without looking you can sense his surprise and uncertainty, but he takes a seat next to you against the wall. He's shaking a little bit and you think it must just be the season, the visceral hope you've all nurtured for six months releasing its grip. Out of the corner of your eye, in the blurry dim of the unlit hallway, you can see his hands winding together and you let yourself tilt until your shoulders are together and Street is as solid against you as he is in your memory.

You get through that last week, somehow, and then you're packing up your room and Bobby comes in, closes the door behind him.

The first thing you think is that you have to make him leave. You can't let him say whatever he came in to say.

"Hey Bobby, could you actually give me a minute," you say too fast, panic running just under the words as you see yourself escaping out the window the second he turns his back.

But he only leans back against the door, looks at you like you're a book made of pictures. "I'm not breaking up with you."

You drop your clock radio and it smashes a little bit, a horizontal crack bisecting the plastic face. You pick it up, set it on the bed, and swallow hard, your hands closing into fists. Because you have more than your fair share of pride, you force yourself to meet his eyes. You don't say anything because you _can't_ \--there's something blocking off your throat and it's either relief or terror still.

"But I'm not coming with you to B.C., either," he says. He looks away, eyes falling on the loosely-organized piles of crap on your bed. "Is that my shirt?"

"Probably." You stuff the T-shirt pile into your bag vindictively. "Where are you going instead?"

Bobby shrugs. "Home. My buddy saw this awesome place for rent right on the beach and I gave 'em three months upfront to make sure I'd get it."

You nod, not sure why you feel like you just got kicked in the chest. "Smart."

"For the weather, mostly. No offense, but it's cold in Canada. And wet. And gray."

"Yeah yeah yeah." You're packing indiscriminately, blindly shoving dirty sneakers on top of clean clothes, snapping the bats off of bobbleheads. You're not looking at him, asking, "You sure you're not breaking up with me?"

Bobby doesn't answer for the longest time, and your blood runs cold.

"Maybe let's. Give it the off-season. It wouldn't be for good, just, just to get some space," he says, sounding terrible, hoarse and torn up.

Your back is to him and you are staring down at your hands, twisted up in the shirt you stole from him. You think that you should be angry; you _wish_ you could be angry, that you could whirl and holler him down, refuse to let him do this to you. You can out-argue him, his reasons are flimsy and stupid because you love him, you love the fuck out of him and that's what counts.

But you're not angry. You're very very tired, almost sick from it.

"Yeah," you say without looking at him. "Whatever, Bobby."

He stands there for almost half a minute, staring at your back as you stare at your hands, and then you hear him leave, the clap of your door followed seconds later by Bobby's. You're able to fall then, just kinda collapsing on all the junk you've accumulated this year, face buried in the slippery material of a warm-up jacket and your hands holding your head like there are bombs falling.

You go home to Canada thinking that it's over. It's bullshit for Bobby to say it's just for the off-season, just a break and not a break-up. You have this awful suspicion that he could string you along for years and years if you let him. You spend way too much time wondering if it would be worth it.

Really bad ideas are all that occur to you these days, and so sometime before the World Series you go to this club you know in Vancouver, done up like all the other scenester kids with your hair spiked and kohl on your eyelids to make the blue twice as bright. You consciously search out Bobby's opposite, slight dark-haired boy more pretty than handsome, and you take him into the backroom drunk out of your goddamn mind because it's the only way you can keep from flinching every time he touches you.

You're barely coherent. You don't let him suck you off because you can't look down and see somebody else's face, not yet. You turn him around and bend him over, hands on the wall and shirt rucked up to his arms, and you run a hand up his skinny back, into his hair that you can tell now is dyed black, odd plastic look to it. Pull his head back and he's making all the little noises you'd expect, squirming back against you. You're not even kinda hard though you've got a hand in your shorts half-heartedly working at it, and you know you could fix that if you just let your mind go where it wants.

You won't fuck this kid thinking about Bobby, though, that's the kind of cliché to which you never intend to lower yourself. You realize after a minute that you can't fuck him at all.

"Never mind," you mumble, biting the kid's throat and pulling him back around. "Better idea," and then he's up against the wall, you're on your knees, and you don't need to get hard to do this.

He fucks it up, scratches your ears instead of holding the back of your head like he's supposed to, and he doesn't go as deep as he should or moan your name. You never even told this kid your name. You get him off as quickly as you can and then have to fake like you jerked yourself off so he doesn't go reaching for you. You're reeling, the walls closing in around you, and you have to get out of here.

You throw up for like a half an hour in the alley. If nothing else, it gets you sober enough to drive home.

The next few days are pretty much the worst of your life so far.

You can't sleep, you can't eat. The goddamn clichés have caught up with you after all. Your mind never shuts down; lying in bed thinking about Bobby Crosby has become one of your most recent definitions of torture. You skip breakfast and lunch because of the stone that lives in your belly now, and force something down at dinner when your body begins to feel frail. You can't keep this up very long. You don't have any weight to spare, just muscle and you need that, that's how you pitch.

You are flatly miserable, dreaming up nightmare scenarios all day long, the various tragic courses your life might take from here. You can't remember how to sit around watching bad television without him. You can't remember the point of anything.

You're staying with your folks because it dramatically decreases your chances of being found dead in the bathroom only when the smell reaches the hallway, and they are very worried about you. Your dad is always making you your favorite sandwiches and Klondike bars with chocolate chip cookies fresh from the oven on top. Your mom plays street hockey with you in the driveway like she used to when you were nine or ten years old, switching off tending the masking-tape goal on the garage door. It helps but not much, and every night finds you shut away in your childhood bedroom, fingers bloody from your guitar strings, headphones plugged into the mini-amp so you can exist ephemerally in a totally contained world.

In the back of your mind you are able to coldly calculate how much longer you'll be able to survive like this, black and white numbers counting intractably downwards. It's only been maybe three weeks since you left Oakland.

The White Sox are three games up on the Astros in the Series, and you're watching the start of Game 4 when Bobby calls you.

You stare uncomprehendingly at your phone for a moment, trying to figure out an explanation other than the obvious, because Bobby can't be calling you. You have stripped yourself of that expectation.

There's nothing for it. You open your phone, say cautiously, "Hello?"

"Hey Richie."

Your body goes slack, sinking you the couch. Bobby's voice is all roughed up and plainly American in that way California boys have, and it doesn't mean anything special, him calling you Richie, because that is what Bobby always calls you, no matter how angry at each other you might be.

"Hey Bobby."

There's a protracted exchange of breaths, and you think that even this is helping, audible proof that Bobby's alive on the other end of the line; you wish you could do this twice a day.

"How's it treating you, man?" Bobby asks eventually. You assume he means the off-season and not the broken heart.

"Brutally," you answer, which is true enough for both.

Bobby makes a rusty sighing sound. "Yeah."

Quiet again, and you lay your hand across your eyes, blocking out the room and the television and the World Series and everything. You think about how unfortunate it is that you are not the kind of man who begs.

But then Bobby says, "So, that was kinda stupid, what I did," and your eyes go wide behind your hand.

"Which?" you manage.

"Going home alone. Turns out. Turns out it's not very good for me."

You hold very still, thinking that if you wake up right now you might have to kill yourself. The moment passes, taking with it the clutching grip on your heart. Your lungs fill with a sudden gasp of air, and you bite the inside of your cheek to keep from loosing a ragged sob of relief.

"Yeah," you say very carefully. "Not for either of us."

"So maybe. Maybe you wanna come down here now?"

You don't answer for a second because your brain isn't really working right now and you can't think of any of the words you're sure you know. Bobby's breath hitches nervously, and you think about how he broke your heart, and how you could return the favor right now, just crush him flat.

But you're not the vengeful type. And you're still so fucking gone on him, it's disgusting.

"Took you fuckin' long enough," you say, kinda strangled but not too bad. Bobby laughs, coarse disbelieving sound.

"Just hurry, Richie," he tells you, and you do. You're on a plane nine hours later, before the celebration has ended in Chicago.

Bobby's house is just as promised, so close to the beach sand blows across the sidewalks and only palm trees will grow in the yard. He's sitting on the front steps when your cab pulls up, watching guardedly and making no move to get up, so you drop your bag on the walk, climb on top of him and kiss him so hard you forget what country you're in.

He takes you to bed and keeps you there for twenty hours. You have peanut butter sandwiches and Gatorade to keep your strength up, and you have sex until you run out of rubbers, both Bobby's and the half-empty box that lives at the bottom of your road trip bag. Bobby pushes his hands across every part of your body, single-minded and intense. You wrap your legs around his waist and plead, "Come on, faster, _harder_ ," because it makes his eyes go stormy and black.

You don't talk like you should. At first you're too occupied fucking each other back and forth across the bed, passing out insensate and waking up to find the whole right side of your body alive with pins and needles because Bobby's lying on it. And then once you've finally taken the edge off, the peace that the two of you establish is fragile at best and you want to do nothing that might disturb it.

So you don't get to ask Bobby why he sorta broke up with you, and you're obliged to come up with your own explanations. It was circumstantial, you're almost sure. It was such a hard month, September when the team couldn't win and Street wouldn't look at you and Bobby couldn't run. Everything just piled up at once, and the two of you got in over your heads, turned on each other because that's what you do when you're scared, you take vicious swings, lash out at those closest, and of course Bobby's no different.

Southern California's a good place to let go of shit, anyway, the ocean smooth dark blue and green, staring right back at you when you sit out on the beach watching Bobby surf and crash in white foam, disappearing for brief stretches of time. You are woken up by earthquake tremors in the middle of the night that everybody else sleeps through and doesn't remember in the morning. The mailman never has any recognition on his face no matter how many times you're at the door to take the handful from him. Each day the world gets erased and rubbed clean again. Nothing sticks down here.

In keeping with the theme of obliteration, you and Bobby have been getting drunk a lot.

You don't think anything of it at first. Drunk makes it easier to talk, and easier not to care when you can't, and it lets you sleep the night through instead of the both of you rolled away from each other, just pretending. And it's not like you've got shit to do, no team or responsibilities to keep your head on straight. You have nothing to endanger except yourselves.

It's really simple to crack your first beer with lunch (because you kicked lazily at Bobby's feet under the table and he folded his legs in so you couldn't reach), and just kinda not stop for the rest of the day (because Bobby kept calling other friends and talking to them for twenty, thirty minutes at a stretch while you sat on the couch watching _Top Chef_ and trying to ignore how you were being ignored). You don't get totally wasted or anything (because then you might say something you'll regret), but you maintain a foggy buzz all day long, a messy sorta grin whenever Bobby glances over. Bobby keeps up with you (because you call him girl names until he opens a fresh beer), and usually you end up making out on the floor all crazy and mindless like it used to be, the room whirling and the windows trembling, the piercing ring of glass right on the verge of shattering.

A few times a week, you meet up with Haren or Zito or some of Bobby's friends from school, go to cantina-inspired bars and too-loud clubs where you show off how good you've gotten at it, pounding shots and hanging off your boy's shoulders. Bobby is happier when there are other people around, seems to like you better. He smiles at you across scratched bar tables, remembers to order you a rum and Dr. Pepper instead of the traditional, slouches close at the end of the night when the two of you are in the backseat, heads together and your hand down his pants, snickering like children as Zito complains, "Quit jerking him off, Rich, that's _gross_ ," his scandalized eyes wide in the rearview.

Once it's just the two of you alone in Bobby's creaky little house, the tension crawls back up your spine, subtle poison in the air. Bobby looks at you with a small vertical line pressed between his eyebrows, like he's distantly trying to figure out what you're doing there. You ask over and over again, "What, _what_?" but Bobby never even knows what you're talking about.

Bobby thinks he drives better when he's drunk and so you have to steal his keys a lot of the time. He regains consciousness in the shotgun seat and bitches at you for driving his car like a fuckin' maniac until an alcoholic wave overcomes him again and he thankfully falls quiet. You have lost all your natural grace and you trip over carpet, throw elbows into lamps, walk into door frames. Bobby makes fun of you, spaz, freak, goddamn walking disaster area, and you dwell over each one; you take it more seriously than it's probably meant.

Then one night you're sacked out on the couch and Bobby comes back from hitting the bars with his high school buddies. You hear him fighting with his shoes in the hallway, swearing all thick and packed with slurs, and little frissons of excitement go through you because usually when he goes out without you he comes home wanting to screw around, and you've been well-conditioned.

Bobby appears in the doorway and you push up on your elbow, blinking. He looks like he's been dragged for miles, skeleton slumping under his skin and his hollow eyes glittering feverishly. He grins big at you, wolfish and unsettling.

"You, motherfucker," Bobby says, sounding mostly pleased. He struggles out of his overshirt, hiking up his T-shirt in the process and he doesn't bother tugging it back down, half his stomach showing pale and hard as he comes over to you.

"What," you ask distractedly, reaching for his belt. Bobby twists his hips away, smirking down at you.

"Look what you've done to me."

Bobby spreads his arms out wide, offering himself up, and you study him, your thoughts heated and confused. He's not steady, but still strong, fine muscles of his stomach outlined, his chest pulled wide. You think he looks wonderful; it makes you ache how much you want him.

"Yeah, still really hot," you say, and try to pull him down, but he pushes your hands away, shaking his head. His face knots, frustrated lines drawing across his forehead.

"You listen to me, listen," he insists, and abruptly jerks his T-shirt up and over his head. You stare up at him, mouth hanging open a little. "You see how fucked up I am?"

"What was it, Jaeger?"

"Shut up." He thwaps you across the face with his shirt and you kinda sputter out a laugh. All your attention is fixed on him, perfect body and wrecked swimming eyes. "Missing the point, you're always missin' the goddamn point."

"So tell me." You hook a hand in his belt, don't let him get away this time. "You're so smart, lemme know."

Bobby makes this awful crooked smile. He looks like he's about to cry. "Everything about me is exactly like it should be, except for you."

You let go of him immediately. He sways as your hand clips out of his belt, looming over you and you think that if he falls, if he crushes you, that will be an okay way to go. Bobby's still kinda smiling down at you, and you wish to god that he would stop.

"I. I'm sorry?" you say, hating the weak question in it but you don't know what Bobby wants to hear from you.

Bobby points at you, wavery and accusatory. "An' you did it on purpose. I told you, I always said I didn't know what the fuck I was doing but you were always like, oh it's okay, just suck me off, Bobby, just fuck me again, fuckin' move in with me and follow me around and tell everybody about it and never fuck another girl again, and what, when was I supposed to tell you to stop?"

He shakes his head, looking faintly amazed. You are motionless, petrified.

"I couldn't," he continues, frayed edge to his voice, his drunk eyes blazing at you and making wild toppling things happen in your chest. "I don't know how it happened, but I can't do anything without you and I don't _understand_. This isn't what I'm supposed to be."

Your hand is closed in a sewn-tight fist, pressed hard against the side of your leg, and he is looking at you so earnestly, sincere distress bleeding out of him and you think it's insane that he doesn't see what he's doing to you.

"You love me," you manage to say, chiseling each word. "Quit trying to, to figure it out. It happened because it happens all the time; nobody's ever _supposed_ to fall in love."

Bobby laughs a little bit and it rallies you somewhat, hope shooting through you for a split second before he starts shaking his head again. He pushes you back into the coach and straddles your body, settling in with his hands on your face, thumbing over your cheekbones.

"This is just, it's so close to the life I actually want," Bobby says, and then he kisses you, which is good because you might have hit him otherwise. You might have burst into fucking tears.

You get your arms around and wrestle him under you, leaning your elbows on his bare chest and touching your forehead to his. You can feel his breath on your mouth, smell the alcohol clinging so brightly to him. His eyes are the palest blue, watering down more than longer you know him.

He's waiting for you, half-smirking because he doesn't seem to realize that that was a terrifically cruel thing for him to say to you. You don't know why he can't see it on your face, and you think that you must just look pissed off; Bobby's used to you looking pissed off.

You tell him you're gonna fuck him and his eyebrows go up but he's okay with it. You only ask a few times a year, and you're not asking this time. You're stripping his pants off and pushing his legs up to drape over your shoulders, and he's watching you with that steady almost-happy look on his face. You growl, sneer. You fold him in half to get at his mouth, bite the smirk away. He can't keep quiet, gasping and moaning as you fuck into him and his hand is clawing at your arm, his heel thumping on your back. You close your eyes and kiss him again, deeply aware that this _is_ the life you actually want.

This is the only life you know how to live.

In the morning Bobby is reticent and apologetic. It's plain that he doesn't remember exactly what he said, only that it caused you harm, and he tries to make it up with chocolate chip pancakes, runs down to the bodega to get some no-pulp O.J. because you finished the bottle off yesterday.

You stay close to him for a few days; everywhere he goes, you go. Something is happening between the two of you. It hasn't been right since you've come down to Long Beach, but you are going to get through this; you're going to hold on to him no matter what.

Danny Haren fucks off to Austin for a long weekend and comes back with Huston Street in tow. He said he was gonna, but you guess you never really believed him. Haren and Zito are both notorious for making grandiose plans and never following through, and anyway, Huston's all weird now, he probably won't want to come.

You go over to Haren's place early on accounta the tee time you've got, and you're spearing Cheerios with a fork (it's a game of your own invention) when Street comes stumbling out of the spare bedroom all disoriented and out of whack, mad cork-screwing hair catching the light and looking for a second the exact color Bobby's gets when he lets it grow out long enough to curl.

You're very happy to see him, for some reason. You must have missed him or something.

He's stiff when you hug him, barely scrapes his hands on your back before you're pulling away. Quick warm shot of sweat and skin and Street is trying to smile but he doesn't quite make it there. Then Danny's in the room, throwing you into a headlock for finishing the milk although you left enough for at _least_ two cups of coffee in there, and then everything starts to feel mostly normal again.

You and Bobby hang around at Danny's house watching soap operas, and it's only after you've been doing it for half an hour that you second-guess your arm around Bobby's shoulders with Huston and all his obnoxious _issues_ sitting right there, but then you remember: _fuck him._

Anyway, you've always been handsy when you're drunk.

Maybe it is too much for the kid, though, because the gang of you goes out to a bar and you're pressing close to Bobby's back to make sure he gets the specifics of your order, your hand familiarly in place just above his belt, and suddenly Street knocks your arm aside. When you turn on him he looks shocked himself, his hands pulled halfway up defensively.

"Careful," Street tells you, his eyes darting like you terrify him, like you're just _wrong_ on a basic level and he can't bear seeing it in you. "You should. Be careful."

You're thinking about redneck bars in Utah and everything you've gone through just to have a boy that you could touch whenever you wanted, and you sneer at him. "I wasn't gonna blow him on the dance floor or anything, dude."

Street's face pulls in disgust, something horrified flashing through his eyes, and then he's saying, voice all shattered, "Just don't act like such a-"

He stops suddenly but you won't, you know that word he's too much of a mama's boy to say out loud, that filthy word scrawled all over his face. Red slams into you as you shove him backwards into a cluster of preppie kids, and you shout the punchline for all to hear:

"Like what? Like a fucking _faggot_ , Huston, you little bitch?"

Street is devastated, jerking back like he's been shot and then spinning, shouldering recklessly through the crowd and heading for the open night. You're breathing too fast, hands fisted and you want to go after him, kick the shit out of him because what the _fuck_ is he doing, can't he tell that you're already only hanging by a motherfucking thread?

Instead you whirl back to the bar and swiftly relocate Bobby. He's doing shots with Danny and you push close, kiss him hard while he's still halfway through being surprised to see you there out of nowhere all of a sudden. You open his mouth expertly, licking across his fire-tasting tongue, your hand keeping his head placed just so, and in the background you can hear Danny saying, "Whoa. Um. Ew?"

Bobby shoves you off, gasping, "The fuck, you horny fucker, get away from me."

You shake your head, fury and dismay at violent war within you. "That fucking kid, I'm gonna fucking kill him."

"Jesus," Bobby groans. "If I give you permission to fuck him just once, will it end the constant drama? Because I might be okay with that."

You punch him hard enough on the shoulder that he squawks. Haren's watching the two of you with car-wreck fascination, but you're pretty drunk and you're not worried about if you're making a scene, if you're the kinda guy who _makes scenes_ now.

"He just. I. _Fuck_. He said I was acting too gay or some shit--he's a little _bitch_ ," and you're spitting the words, gnashing over them.

Bobby's lit himself, and he jolts up from his casual slump on the bar, muscles tensing and eyes going metallic. "Did you hit him?"

"No, I was, I'm _gonna_ ," but you're just talking shit, and Haren discreetly rolls his eyes, pounds another shot before saying to Bobby, "I'll deal with him. You deal with Rich."

You bare your teeth at Danny because you are not some problem to be _dealt with_ , and you can kick his ass too, but anyway, Bobby's saying, "And Richie, you gotta deal with me 'cause I want to go beat up the kid too, you gotta hold me back."

You nod, happy to have a job, and his arm finds its way around you and you fit yourself in where you belong. Bobby feeds you a shot and rolls his head on your shoulder and no one tells him to stop. You can feel the fight sinking out of you as the music hammering overhead switches to a remix of an AC/DC song that you know by heart. Bobby's smiling at you, shiny in the blacklight. You press even closer, his arm slipping securely down your chest. You'll act as gay you goddamn please.

A little while later you get a voicemail from Huston Street saying, "I'm sorry," a bunch of times and even though you are getting hella tired of hearing that from him, you have to admit that he's still really selling it.

You let it go, anyway, even if you're not comfortable alone in the room with him. You're still teammates and you really want this to work out, somehow. Life was ten times more fun before Street found out you were gay and decided it had to fuck everything up. You keep thinking if you can just get Street to be okay with it, then getting Bobby to be okay with it will be a piece of cake.

You probably need to stop drinking so much.

Bobby scares the hell out of Street in Zito's kitchen, telling him to never say anything like that again, and he gives you warning so you can watch for Street's frightened-rabbit expression when he comes back into the living room. You take a measure of satisfaction in that, but it's pretty small.

Street leaves after a week, and you happen to be over at Haren's house when he leaves to take the kid to the airport and you tag along just because Bobby isn't returning your calls today and you have nothing better to do. You keep up conversation pretty good in the car, shaking his hand instead of hugging him when you say goodbye because he didn't really hug you back the first time and it might be awkward and you'd rather not go out like that.

Street manages a smile, says, "Tell Bobby I said see you later," and if you flinch it's only because that is definitely the last thing you are going to be doing.

The rest of the winter passes in jags, a three-day stretch over the border that you are mostly blacked out for and so it feels like half an hour, and then the two weeks when Bobby is barely talking to you and you would swear the clocks are moving backwards. You are hyper-aging, a year for every day until you find yourself shedding memories and watching the silverware in your hand shake.

You have to sober up as spring training approaches, you and Bobby both, and it's one more thing you don't need right now, halfway detoxing and all it does is shorten your tempers and make you feel like shit. Bobby takes the excuse and runs with it, starts picking a lot of unnecessary fights. You try to be sympathetic but it's hard when you're going through the exact same shit and he couldn't give a fuck, just piling on.

You can feel some kind of total nervous collapse waiting in your future, and you think that you'd rather have your arms broken. Bones _heal_. If you go crazy, you think that you might not come back.

Bobby says that you look like hell and it's not kindhearted like it might have been once, just a basic observation about the world: the sky is blue, the lock on the bathroom door is busted, you look like hell. You always thank him really sarcastically, but he only tips an eyebrow, smoothly shifts over into ignoring you.

He doesn't look much better, honestly, although you still have something like restraint and don't throw it back at him too often. You don't want even want to mention his mournful cast, because it makes you sad in a hateful balky kind of way, this broken thing you can do nothing to fix. Bobby's face has hollowed and become dimly vulpine, the rings around his eyes darkening by the day, and he's taken to chewing on his lower lip nervously, so it's all ragged and chapped. He doesn't smile for real, just this kinda half-smiling smirk that won't draw blood to his abused mouth.

You are each trapped in an airlessly tight orbit around the other, and you keep colliding, pieces chipping off and cartwheeling away to become meteors. It's sort of like a holding pattern, pretty bad but not yet beyond tolerable, and you feel like you should be counting days again, bracing yourself. You've been falling for a long time, and now all you're doing is waiting for the sudden stop.

Soon enough, though, it's time to go back to Phoenix.

Bobby comes along with you when pitchers and catchers are due, which you are pitifully grateful for even though there's a sneaking rat's voice in the back of your mind that knows the two weeks apart would have done you both good. It's hard enough seeing him every day; you can't imagine going without.

Just to emphasize how every decision you make these days is the wrong one, you and Bobby get into a fight right after arriving. It starts off being about the ice cream sandwich you accidentally dropped on the seat of Bobby's car, but spirals quickly out of control because Bobby doesn't accept your first apology and you refuse to fucking _grovel_ , even though he probably only wants you to sound a little more sincere, get that nasty curl out of your lip, but fuck him, you _said_ you were sorry.

It ends with Bobby slamming an empty cabinet door so hard it snaps right off its hinges, and he calls you a selfish fuck (which you are _not_ ), storms out of the condo without looking back. You chuck the cabinet door off the balcony into the pool, thinking about how Bobby's name is on the rental agreement because he happened to be the one standing closest to the landlord when she put the papers on the kitchen counter, so if anyone gets in trouble it'll be him, and good, it's the very least he deserves. Then you kick Bobby's duffel bag into the wall over and over again, until it feels like you're kicking a body, dead weight and soft because you've pulverized every bone, and you force yourself to stop.

You go over to Haren's place and he's out in the yard, futzing around with a soccer ball and talking about how he coulda picked up a soccer scholarship just as easy if Pepperdine hadn't come through, and you're leaning against the side of the house not believing anything that he says. You've got a song stuck in your head, fingers tapping absently at your side, looking as close to directly into the sun as you dare.

From behind there are footsteps, and when you look over, narrow-eyed because you don't like people sneaking up on you, and it's Huston Street with his hands pocketed, looking kind of poleaxed. You say hey and he just stares at you, making you a little uncomfortable but then Danny's yelling and coming over and you don't want Haren to see the way Street is looking at you, so you go inside, one hand loose against your aching head. Too much fucking sunlight out there.

The three of you hit up a bar. You order double shots from the start and Haren gives you a look but you're not interested in what he thinks. You've been really good all week, only passing out drunk a couple of times, and you've earned it.

Street isn't talking hardly at all, trying to smile at your little jokes but always a second or too late, his timing shot. He keeps grabbing at Haren, scratching at his watchband, and you eye him askance, thinking bitterly that Street probably still hates looking at you, still using your teammates as human shields.

And then Danny misses a call from his girlfriend and goes outside where it's quieter to call her back. Street is sitting across from you staring at his hands, his mouth twisted into a stricken bow, obscured panic rioting on his features.

"So," you say, glaring at him. He glances up but his eyes skid off your face without ever touching down, gives an absentminded hum of acknowledgement that makes something snap in you.

"Fuck you, man," you say with relish, and you have just enough time to see his expression collapse into a kind of astonished dismay, and then you're making for the door, the cool clean air.

You want to punch something inanimate--you want to punch something _animate_ , maybe something animated in motherfucking Texas, but you also don't want to get arrested or suspended or god knows what other calamities. There is this vast fog of rage and indignation and despair encompassing you, blurring your better senses. You're off-kilter, thrown to all hell because you usually have things so well in hand. You are usually so cool.

You shove your hands into your pockets before they can do any damage, and you watch Street emerging from the bar, looking around and his shoulders hunching as he spots you, walking over as slow as the last batter in a ten-run rout.

He says your name like it might break, and you snarl, trying your best to hate him right back, but he looks so _sad_ all the time.

"You can't even talk to me anymore?" you demand. "You can't even, like, sit in the bar and say something about the fucking weather?"

Street's mouth fishes, but he doesn't say anything, and you toss your hands, turning away in self-preservation. You feel fucking _terrible_ , abandoned and unloved. "Fine. Jesus. Can't even fucking talk to me. Disgust you that much, great. Real great."

"You, you didn't give me a chance," Street protests. You sneer at the sky, not looking at him.

"Well shit, man, go right the fuck ahead. Is somebody stopping you?"

It's a risk, that moment when the turn around second has been made and the ball is bobbled ever-so-slightly out in right field: if you try to stretch you better fuckin' make it. Asking Street to tell you the truth, it's that same type of terrifying adrenaline burst scouring acidic through your veins, and you can recognize it even though you hardly ever get to run the bases anymore.

Street, chest hitching, says, "I'm sorry," and you spit back at him, "Jesus, would you quit _saying_ that," and watch his whole body jag in reflex. Street slumps on the stone wall at his back, his eyes pleading at you, let it go, let it go, but you won't, you _can't_.

"You said you were cool with it," you tell him.

"I am."

"Then fucking _act_ like it, Huston. God." He can't be as obtuse as he pretends; he's probably just hiding his revulsion as well as he can, so you should probably stop pushing him.

"What do you want me to say?" and there's a frenetic edge of Street's voice that has you turning back to face him. "I mean. I said we were cool, we are, okay? But I can't, can't talk like this. I don't know what you want me to say."

There's color on his face, just visible in the yellow streetlight that muffles the scene. He looks so pained, older than his years with his features all screwed up like that. It could be the thing that infuriates you the most, this idea that Street thinks he has the right to _suffer_ over you being queer, and you wonder if he's taken the burden of your sins onto his own soul because his WWJD bracelet told him to.

You exhale. You cut back to facts, trying to remember that he's just a dumbfuck kid and he needs stuff laid out for him, plain and clear.

"I can't spend the whole season waiting for you to decide it's too weird and bug out again."

Street shakes his head, schooling his face a little. "I won't."

You scoff, your palms aching because as it turns out you've had your hands wrenched in fists. "The fuck you won't. I'm sure you've, like, never had to deal with it before, but just, deal with it, would you? Because I don't." You stop, swallow. Your voice was about to crack there. "I don't want to not be friends with you anymore."

You look quickly away, scowling at two drunk girls chasing down a cab in stilettos. You can feel your face heating; you hope he remembers you as well as you remember him. You hope you haven't been ruined for him.

But Street just says okay a couple of times, and puts his hand on the bend of your arm, keeps it there when you instinctively try to pull away. You meet his eyes and read a pretty goddamn good semblance of veracity if it's not the real thing, and he tries to smile and it works better than it has in awhile, and the rough side of his palm is against skin, just under your T-shirt sleeve. You're terrifically aware of it, kind of appalled to find yourself believing him, just this once.

The two of you go back into the bar, mortal injuries patched up with Band-Aids and an intractable thirst in your throats. Street is moderately more at ease, arguing for Garth Brooks over the Jackson 5 until you have to bang your head on the table in consternation, and meanwhile Danny absconds to the jukebox with your quarters and overrules you both in favor of some Grand Funk.

The night ends on an odd note, out on the sidewalk after bodily placing Haren in a cab, you and Street standing right near the spot where you had your big dramatic moment earlier. You offer him a ride before really thinking about it, but luckily he turns you down, and then you say something about Bobby waiting up and he gets a strange look, didn't know that it's actually 'pitchers and catchers and Bobby' as far as you're concerned.

Something about that look on Street's face, almost could be mistaken for some kind of hopeless longing, and so when he claps your shoulder in farewell, you catch his wrist and hold him in place for a moment. You want to tip his chin into the light, get a better study of him. He swallows and wrecks it by offering you a shaky smile, and against your fingers his pulse is thundering along like secretly the two of you are standing in the middle of a minefield that only Huston Street can see.

You let him go, and the drunk rolls over you. Your muddily esoteric thoughts and suspicions fall to babbling like a tower's been knocked down in your brain, and you spin on your heel, striding away with your legs feeling stiff and unused. You claw for a touchstone and arrive at Bobby, chanting his name under your breath as you flag down a taxi and stare out at the Phoenix strip malls sweeping past like a cartoon's repeating chase-scene background.

Bobby's not home when you get there. You're drunk enough to throw dignity under the bus and call his phone about twenty times in five minutes. The last time, head aching and occluded as the black-out swims nearer, you finally leave a message:

"You get your ass home, an' you hurry, Bobby, you fuckin' _run_. Not going down like this no matter what you do to me, see? I still want you here so ha. Ha, Bobby! You can't get rid of me, thought you could but I'm not like that, man, you should know by now. I go in for life, I fuckin' _stick_ , you get me? You're that way too, you're just dumb an' never figured it out, but come home, come on home, Bobby. It's not really as tough as it seems."

Then you pass out, leaving another thirteen minutes of snoring and static on the open line before mercifully rolling your cheek over the 'end call' button.

The next morning you wake up still alone in the house, but there's a milky cereal bowl on the counter and half a pot of coffee in the maker, so you know Bobby's been through. You wander around with a hand curled over your forehead, looking for a note without any real hope of success.

You spend the day watching television and wikisurfing in a morbidly desultory way, all fatal childhood diseases and decimating plague epidemics. Workouts start tomorrow so you can't get as drunk as you'd like, but you take a couple painkillers from Bobby's stash and that helps some.

Bobby comes home late, and you go skittish as he stands in the doorway and passes his eyes over you as if checking for defects. You glower at the _America's Next Top Model_ rerun you're watching, all tense and expecting Bobby to lay into you again, but instead he says in a normal-sounding voice:

"Don't leave shit like that on my voicemail, okay? I lose my phone like twice a month and all anyone has to do is press one."

You press back into the couch, feeling scolded and immediately contrary even though he said it pretty nice.

"Maybe you should pick up when I call, then. Eliminates the need for messages altogether."

Bobby gives you a cold uneven smile. "Doesn't do shit for me not wanting to talk to you, though, does it? G'night, Richie."

And then he's gone, vanished down the hall. You sit very still, staring sightless at the TV. You only remember about half of what you said on the message, enough to know it can only have made matters worse. Bobby doesn't need to hear you vowing fidelity right now; 'for life' is nothing he wishes from you.

You and him limp along like that for awhile, holding each other up because otherwise you wouldn't be able to manage even that. You fight and fuck around and avoid talking about any of it. The days fills up with baseball, and you observe in a detached way how Bobby will still smile at you on the field, never a second of hesitation.

Your teammates start to pick up on the runners of tension between the two of you, the way Bobby keeps calling you by worse names in front of more and more people. Haren keeps giving you these concerned looks of scrutiny like he's checking for bruises, and you get pretty ticked--you're not living with Ike Turner or some shit. Zito once speaks up to defend you out of nowhere (you didn't realize he'd even been following the conversation, much less Bobby's opinion of you as a useless jerk-off), and Bobby spins on him so ferociously no one else ever attempts it.

You could tear back into him just as savagely, but you don't because you can't start up with him in front of everybody--you wouldn't be able to stop, and you know exactly how that would end. Bobby doesn't love you like he used to, but he doesn't yet hate you the way he would if you let your tongue fly in public. Even if he is fucking _begging_ for it, you have just enough resolve to keep yourself in check. Some part of you is still an optimist.

Some of the guys come over to drink at your condo and you and Bobby end up arguing in the hallway over who invited the motherfuckers, even though just yesterday you were both loudly maligning each other's company like you've been stuck on a space station together for years with no reprieve.

Street is there with the others, and you haven't missed his bereft watchful expression when you were in the room, nor the way he is drinking too fast and smiling too much. You're certain it was Bobby who did the inviting, because no way would Street have been on your list. Bobby denies it, crosses his heart and swears to it. Directly, you call him a fucking liar, and Bobby says he wishes he'd never met you, goes back into the living room.

It's not the worst thing he's ever said to you. It's not even the worst thing he's said to you _today_.

The two of you get into the mother of all fights a couple days before the position players show up. It comes up out of nothing, a summer squall from a clear blue sky. You're just sitting around with the remains of two pizzas spread out on the coffee table, playing battle mode on Mario Kart (you only ever play battle mode anymore), not talking much beyond muttered imprecations, vague threats of bodily harm.

You're really good at aiming green shells, bombing the shit out of Bobby four rounds in a row and for whatever reason that's the last straw for him. He sets into you with the game serving as a fairly transparent pretext. Somehow it's your fault that he keeps mushrooming himself into walls; you chose the game knowing he grew up with a Sega Genesis and doesn't have the requisite Super Nintendo background, and this is evidently a crime worse than infidelity.

You have a hard time believing that _this_ is how he's electing to spend the afternoon's discontent, such a ridiculous thing to pick a fight about and so you call him on it, saying something like, "What next, Bobby, am I gonna start breathing too loud?"

He comes back without pause, "You _already_ breathe too loud, it's actually really annoying," and you clench your hands so tight the plastic controller squeaks.

It gets stupider from there, venomous and irrational, clouded by the millions of piddling offenses Bobby has conjured for you. It's pernicious, fighting this heartlessly with someone you know as well as you know him. There's nobody else around now and you don't have to hold back anymore.

You tell him, "Goddamn it, you're gonna fuckin' lay off me, man, or-"

"What?" Bobby half-yells. He can never let you finish a fucking sentence these days. Absurdly, you're both still playing the game, not looking at each other but trolling around murderously for the avatars on the screen. "What are you gonna do, I'm interested."

You grit your teeth. "What is _wrong_ with you? Are you even kind of aware of how much of a dick you're being?"

"Well, I got you for comparison, don't I. Mother _fucker_ don't you fucking come near me with that star."

" _Bitch_ ," you hiss; that's been a favorite of his in the clubhouse lately. You stalk him ruthlessly until Donkey Kong and Bowser are close enough to kiss, flick on your star power and ram him into a spin-out, then go back for another and another, sadistic bumper cars and you're cackling, taunting, "Oh you _suck_ and then you suck some _more_ , all you are right now is _fucking meat_ ," and then Bobby chucks his controller into the wall and with a sound like ribs cracking it bursts into pieces.

You freeze, frightened for a split second before you forcibly disregard it. Bobby stares at the mess of the busted controller, gray and black shards of plastic on the carpet, and then down at his hands, which are clawed and trembling. There's a predatory aspect to be gleaned from the tautness of Bobby's shoulders, his breath coming quick.

"Get out," he says quietly.

You stand, and then do nothing, hands hanging nerveless and empty at your sides. You can't move just yet. Your skin is being flayed off, your bones pried open. You are being turned inside out, and he has to give you just a minute.

"Richie," he says, and drops his head into his hands, a small moan that makes your heart trip painfully.

"I'm going," you say hoarsely, but he's shaking his head, palms flat to his eyes and his shoulders shuddering.

"You gotta still come back, though," he says, and your legs give out, you have to catch yourself on the back of the couch. Crippling rush, and you decide almost immediately that it's a fresh wave of anger.

"What, because we're having so much fucking fun?" you ask harshly. "Don't pull this shit on me, Bobby."

"I'm not," Bobby says into his hands, still more of a moan than anything else.

"You fuckin'." You can't even think of the words for it. Your hands fist compulsively and without purpose, and you abruptly lose your stomach for all of it, turn determinedly on your heel and make for the door.

Bobby says your name again and you hate how it draws you up short, one hand on the doorframe. You don't look back at him, canting forward until your forehead rests on the wall.

Bobby says, "It's not over," and you're honestly not sure if that's a promise or a threat.

First thing on your agenda is getting fucked up beyond all recognition, or FUBAR as your army friends like to say, and that only takes about an hour, considering the dedication that you put into it. Then you're stumbling around getting lost in giant crowds of college kids with sweaty gelled hair and popped collars. You spend some time sitting in a deserted sandlot hunched over your phone, reading old text messages that Bobby sent you over and over again.

Very late, you wind up at Huston Street's house.

You're in his driveway, your body rocking as if asea, wondering what you're doing here. Street never makes you feel better about anything, and this least of all. You might be very near the end with Bobby--you _are_ , you know that, quit pussyfooting around. You are wearing your skeleton and viscera on the outside now, bleeding all over the place, and you know that Huston Street ought to be the last person in the world you'd want to see you in this condition.

And yet here you are in his driveway, here you are leaning on his earsplitting fuck of a door buzzer. You're mumbling under your breath, like talking to yourself on the mound: down, stay down, just _do_ it you fuck. Here Street is in powder blue pajama pants and a gym shirt without sleeves. You are perilously distracted by his arms for a second, long and smooth and tan and you rip your eyes up to his face, making a solemn shape of your mouth.

"That motherfucker."

You don't feel like you need to explain yourself much better than that. Street lets you in, trepidation creasing his sleep-soft face, and you trip against the mail table, knock over the little trashcan, falling against the wall. You shake your head briskly, trying to jar your brain so it'll work right again, and you realize with perfect lucidity that you will be passing out sometime in the very near future, situation you probably should address.

The couch is down a mile of hallway and your shirt petulantly refuses to detach from your head and arm, but you persevere, you make it. You sneak a glance at Street, all sorts of warning bells going off in your mind because you're so drunk and he's so goddamn pretty. He's standing as if nailed to the floor, watching you like he suspects he's not actually awake right now.

"He's so fuckin'," you say, but what, what's the right word for Bobby right now? He's an asshole and a coward and he's trying to get you to leave him so he won't have to leave you, so he can go off guilt-free, find some girl and repair the picture of his future. There's not really one word for it.

You sigh an oath instead, and bury your face in the couch cushion, breathing deep of rough fibers and bam, asleep just like that.

You resurface, your cellphone buzzing at seven like every day of spring training, to find your T-shirt folded neatly and draped on the arm of the couch, a blanket that smells like Street laid over you. Fortunately, you're hungover within inches of some kind of permanent impairment, so you don't have to pay attention to such incongruent details.

Moving very slowly, better gauged in geological time, you make it to the bathroom and wash your face, finger-brush your teeth because god knows Street doesn't want you using his toothbrush. You get the rotten taste out of your mouth, pop four Excedrin and get the newspaper off the stoop, go to put on the coffee.

Out the window is a palm tree, the sun a neon slug crawling up its trunk, and you stare at the spray of green against the sky, thinking about that first winter in Long Beach, when you drove 3200 kilometers without even calling to say you were coming. That feeling you had in your chest speeding down the coast, that surety that you were exactly where you were meant to be, unswervingly following the dictates of your heart--you can explain it, maybe, but never remember what it actually felt like.

Street comes in rumpled and barefoot and you flush, looking away and rubbing at your eyes. Ever since he got back this spring, he's looked so fucking good to you, and you don't know if that's some kind of masochistic thing on your part, considering the kind of guy he is, or just Bobby's grip on you loosening at last, all the other boys in the world coming in clear once more.

He gets himself a cup of coffee, perches on the counter with his legs hanging loose, swinging almost imperceptibly.

You put your mug down, palms of your hands feeling tender, vaguely scalded. You tell him, "I just needed to get out of there," and you tell him, "I'm sorry I woke you up," and Street shrugs, mouth formed small and careful blowing across his coffee, tocking his heel on the cabinet.

You tell him, "It's just, sometimes, you know," and then that's pretty much as far as you want to go with _that_ , so you clam up. Street nods like he gets you, anyway, eyes narrowed and tracking over you.

"You could tell me about it," he says, takes a quick drink.

You laugh, and it kinda hurts. "Yeah, that's doubtful."

Street gets a pretty funny injured look on his face. "Fine. Only took you in off the streets at three in the stupid morning, but whatever."

"Look at you," you snort, a weird discordant sense of pride going through you: the homophobic motherfucker has come so far.

Street just looks kinda confused, asks, "Why'd you come here? Whyn't you go to Danny's? Or a hotel?"

It's a fair question, and maybe one for which you have no immediate answer. You cast about, looking down at the newspaper that you have opened and unread before you. Lots of bad stuff is happening in the Middle East, people crying in newsprint soft-focus. You think about standing in Street's driveway last night, seeing the full moon set at the peak of the little house's roof, like it was about to catch gravity and go rolling down. And then you think about Bobby again.

"Felt dumb, you know?" you say eventually, not looking up. "Like, me and him, it's not. Easy. It never has been."

You hear yourself say that and you're caught by surprise for a moment, remembering the minor leagues, the beautiful grit and traced oil derricks against the Texas sky and how it was all so goddamn _romantic_ , and you can't start doubting the truth of that now. You press on:

"And lately, it's been, I dunno. I feel like I keep getting kicked. Like I don't know how to stay down." You pass a hand over your face, loosing a sigh. "Anyway. Danny would think he has to fix it, and so would anybody else. But it's not like that."

It's something beyond repair, is maybe what you're trying to say, or something that has had its essential nature leeched out it, a mutilation at a molecular level--the thing you're trying to save doesn't even exist anymore. You've slipped the cog onto a brand-new circle of hell.

"You came here instead?" Street asks, and you blink at him, cold fake smile on your face. God forbid your game face should ever fall.

"Figured I hadn't traumatized you enough for one year."

Street cracks up laughing, way too much for such a minor quip, and you're taken aback when he almost slides off the counter and has to catch himself on the refrigerator. You say, "Whoa hey," meaning to convey _what the fuck?_ along with _don't fuckin' hurt yourself_ , and then Street kinda takes your breath away, looking up at you with the first genuine smile you've seen from him in six months.

Street gives you a ride into the ballpark, and you occupy yourself trying to remember at what point exactly you mislaid your car last night. The heavy Arizona sunlight pounds into your skull despite your shades and aggressively lowered cap brim. You're still pretty badly hungover, but it's really the least of your concerns.

The two of you walk into the clubhouse side by side, talking about something inconsequential that fuzzes out of your mind as soon as your eyes hit Bobby's. You've lost track of the days, surprised to find the room suddenly full of position players, but the others are only a kind of muzzy impressionistic backdrop. Bobby's across the room but you could swear you hear a crack. He looks worse than you feel; you didn't think that was _possible_.

Bobby's face closes up after a second and he flicks his eyes at Street, then back down at his Sudoku book. Heavy lines mar the plane of his forehead, eyebrows hunched down. You force yourself to look away, swallowing hard and going to see if there are any Danishes left on the tray.

The clubhouse is a wild place with the whole team there again. Logically you know there's space for all of you and that if the room has never run out of oxygen before, it probably won't happen now. Logic isn't of great relief when you can't turn around without stepping on a fifth-string utility infielder, but you man up and suffer stoically through. You are quieter, more antisocial, wearing your glove all the time and punching it restlessly; all you want to do is get on the field, get a ball in your hands and you will be able to breathe then.

Away from the ballpark, things are falling apart faster every day.

Bobby hardly ever sleeps and you don't either. You're still in the same bed even though he's nominally got a room of his own next door; he hasn't lived more than a handful of hours in there. You keep expecting him to make his retreat, particularly when you can't lie still, tossing and kicking him mostly by accident, but he just puts his back to you, his hand shaped around the corner of the mattress.

There are still arguments over breakfast and frozen silences when you get home from the ballpark. You still sit on the couch together, although now you watch TV and he plays his DS, headphones screwed in and not talking for hours at a time, like he's completely alone. It's actually a relief, a lot of the time, a small kindness he's doing you. You still get two beers when you're going for one of your own. He still grabs you when you pass too close in the hallway, presses you up against the wall and drops to his knees.

You are still very much in love with each other. That is the bottom line, said and done. You don't have any idea how to approach a world where that matters for exactly nothing.

Bobby scorches the coffee one morning and you rag him about in a way that would be completely painless last year, but of course this is the worst spring of your life and it erupts into a full-grown shouting match. Bobby is too intent on you to pay attention to what he's doing, and he bangs the pot down in the sink hard enough to splash scalding drops onto his hand and arm. He cries out in sudden pain, brings you up short. His eyes flash at you, skewed and desperate-looking over his shoulder, and you take a step forward instinctively, but you've read him wrong. It's not some crucial moment or anything, because his mouth sneers and he says:

" _Fuck_ , look what you made me do,"

and it's off to the races again.

You're not speaking to each other by the time you leave to go to the ballpark in your separate cars. You're disconsolate, hating the sight of Bobby's perfect black Escalade moving ahead of you, visible from blocks back it's such a monster, so you stop to get a Slurpee. The clerk shortchanges you and you don't notice until you're already back in your car. A shock of pure violent rage beats through you, and you grip the steering wheel to keep yourself from going back in there and kicking the shit out of the guy.

You're shaking. You have learned not to act on any of your more insane urges, because five minutes from now you will be occupied with some more immediate emotional catastrophe.

You punch the steering wheel, pulling it at the last minute and probably saving yourself a dislocated knuckle. You hold the Slurpee to your face until it is mostly numb, your skin feeling dead white and cold, and then you continue on.

The clubhouse is a rollick, your teammates jammed together and roughhousing in the small spaces available, and the sight of them turns your stomach for some reason. You don't want anybody to talk to you or bump into you or _look_ at you, and so you slip along the edges and escape into the hallway, ducking into the video room.

Bobby's already in there, because the universe has lost all its affection for you. You sag back against the door, somehow surprised and resigned at the same time. Bobby barely spares you a glance.

"What."

You shake your head, muscles all tight. "Hiding out."

"This spot's taken."

You don't answer, just lean there against the door and try to rally yourself to face the maddening crowd out there. Bobby's attention is ostensibly on the monitor, face set and composed. There's a silent game of chicken going on between you that you will definitely win; you'll stand here just looking at him as long as he'll let you.

He makes it a minute or two, the kind of thing that always seems five times longer when you're doing nothing but waiting. You're staring at him, probably a little bit glazed, probably pretty idiotic-looking right now.

Bobby stands up, scowls at you. "Move. I'm going to the cages."

Without shifting an inch, you lift your eyebrows at him. "So it was me you were hiding out from."

"Um, duh. Are you gonna move?"

"No." You flatten your back against the door, feeling a surge, last man at the gate type of thing. "You should just get it over with, Bobby."

Bobby's eyes flash warning, but you're heedless, smiling and feeling kinda delirious.

"What," he asks, "you ready for that ass-kicking you been angling for?"

"Whatever you need to do," you tell him, fever-smile stretching beyond your control. "However you wanna do it, but please do it for real, _please_. This is like being dragged behind a truck, so if you're gonna, just, just go ahead and _do it already_."

Bobby feints backwards, his chest kinda caving in and a look of staggered anguish on his face for a split second before he lids his eyes and bites his lip, looks away. Quiet for a long moment, and then:

"Why don't you?" he asks you in a whisper.

You're moving without thinking, taking his shoulders in your hands and he sorta gasps, hooks his hands on your arms. You shake him, unable to believe he even has to ask.

"Because I don't _want to_ ," you say on a hiss, and then jerk him into a hard embrace because you don't want to see his face anymore.

Air bursts out of him and his arms lock around your back like a boxer's clinch, self-defense and pure exhaustion. You bury your face in his neck and fist his T-shirt in your hands, holding him as tightly as you can because you know you won't be allowed to much longer.

The door opens, and almost immediately someone is shouting, "At least lock the door," voice spiking high and distraught and you can't help it, you burst into giggles.

Bobby ducks, presses his face to your throat to feel you laughing. His hand is on the back of your neck and without it you think your head might fall off.

"Who was that?" you manage to ask eventually. "That was the kid, right?"

"Yeah," Bobby says, and lets you go. He steps away, goes over to follow Street's advice and lock the door, comes back with a certain heady look in his eyes. You watch him with excitement and dense foreboding marbling through you, thinking how much you love screwing around at the ballpark and wondering if this is gonna be the last time you and Bobby take the opportunity.

As it turns out, it is.

A week passes, maybe ten days, the both of you still going about your day-to-day like men living in trenches, siege warfare, that kinda mentality. You concentrate on minutes weaving together into hours into days, get through this so that you can get through some more tomorrow, and Bobby hasn't even faked a smile in your direction in weeks.

Then one morning he rolls over onto you, takes your head in his hands and kisses you before you've got your eyes open. Bobby's tongue moving against yours slow and deep and you're dizzy, clinging to his shoulders. His fingers are spread out over your jaw.

It's the work of ten seconds for him to get you both stripped of your shorts and T-shirts and by then you're awake enough to mutter in gasps, "Bobby? _Fuck_ , Bobby," and he doesn't bother responding, tongue marking its way down your ribs and everything. When you pry your eyes open, you gaze down your body to find that Bobby is watching you fiercely, and your back arches, your head falling back.

He sucks you off and it lasts for hours, maybe, years. His hair scuffing your palms and his fingers digging into the hollows of your hips, keeping you in place. You babble at the ceiling about how this is the first thing you ever wanted from him, just Bobby going down on you forever and ever, _please_ , and he has to stop to catch his breath, damp panting mouth on your thigh.

He gets you right on the edge, gets you begging and then takes it as permission to bend you in half and fuck you so careful and thorough you can't really bear it, begging exactly how he wants now. Bobby keeps kissing you, ducking his head and licking at your mouth, and his hands are locked so tightly on your hips you don't know how they still manage to tremble. Bobby keeps his eyes open the whole time.

Right afterwards, he gets out of bed and disappears. You hear the pipes running in the bathroom for a minute before falling silent, and you tense in anticipation of his return, but the door that claps shut is the next room over. You lift your head in a haze, peering at the alarm clock and seeing that you have another hour before you have to wake up. You wonder what Bobby's doing in that other room, and then your stomach hurts very badly and you try to roll over and go back to sleep. It doesn't take.

Bobby doesn't talk to you at breakfast, ignores you completely at the ballpark and during the game. You screw around and take a bullpen session and smile naturally enough with your teammates, but your eyes are always searching past them, fearful and intent.

This is how Bobby would do it, you realize. Just stop talking to you, stop looking at you, find a million new ways to pretend he's never known you. He'll get some third party to throw you out of the house, send your things along behind you, and then he'll box the whole matter up and bury it in some deep inner recess of his mind: That Time I Was Kinda Gay For Awhile. It makes you want to slap him so hard.

You make to leave, not trusting the dark alleys Bobby keeps shoving your thoughts down, but when you get out to the parking lot you find your car pinned in by Bobby's Escalade, bumpers so close there's almost no light between them. A dull spike of pain in your frontal lobe makes you squint, feeling a base anger start to simmer under your skin.

You stalk back into the clubhouse, head right for Bobby, who's playing the new Star Wars game with Chavez. You think that he won't ignore a direct confrontation in front of everyone; it would be way too dramatic and require some inconceivable alternate explanation.

"Dude," you say, keeping your tone even. "You're blocking me in."

Bobby doesn't even side-eye you. "'kay."

"So, move your fucking car."

"Kinda in the middle of something, Richie," Bobby says shortly, and then bitches at Chavez, and your nails bite into your palms, fists tight and ready.

"Hey," you say, sharp and all kinds of don't-fuck-with-me laced through it. "I've got shit to do, man, could you just move your car please."

"Gimme a fuckin' minute. Christ."

Bobby hasn't looked up, not once.

You stand there picturing what your fist would look like drilling into his face, shimmering with restraint, and then you turn on your heel, striding over to the lockers. You find Bobby's and get his car keys out of the pocket in his bag where they live, little inside pocket designed for a cell phone but Bobby keeps his phone in his pants pocket all the time, except when he's in uniform and then it's usually just on the shelf in his locker even though you've told him it's gonna get stolen if he keeps that shit up, and meanwhile you're half-running to the players' lot, Bobby's keys ringing and echoing through the tunnel all bright and manic.

The Escalade is a ridiculous beast that you have to climb up into practically hand over hand. You lose your footing and bark your shin severely enough that the pain sings all through you, makes you trembly. Memories gibber through your mind as you lever yourself into the seat, soapy water and sunlight, wet blades of glass stuck to your skin as Bobby laughed and slipped away across the metal.

You turn the key hard enough to almost snap off in your hand. You know what you're doing as you shift into reverse and eye the concrete post in the side mirror. One infinitesimal twitch of your wrist and Bobby's lovely car touches stone. You pull harder, feeling something tear inside you as you hear the screech of riven metal breaking the calm of the day. You press down on the gas and the car lurches backwards, the stone post clipping off the side mirror with the punched sound of imploding glass.

You are laughing. You are laughing so hard there are tears standing in your eyes.

You force the Escalade back until it's clear of the post and you can swing open the door, fall out in a graceless mess. You are laughing so hard you can't breathe, and you don't even glance at the damage, staggering back inside with your heart set on Bobby, just like always.

He's right where you left him and you get his name out, get him snapping back at you, and then another animalistic cackle shudders out of you, drawing every eye in the room. You feel it like a spotlight, like the top of the ninth with the whole stadium on their feet as you try to go the distance.

Bobby says, "What the fuck did you do?"

That's hilarious, the idea that you could possibly explain it right now, so you chuck his keys at him instead, the nine hundredth time in the history of the two of you, and he catches them clean out of the air. He rams his shoulder into you as he goes past, sending you tumbling off-balance into the wall. You grab for balance, racking your knuckles hard.

A couple of the other guys follow Bobby, and last is Street, who comes to stand near you with huge eyes, freaked out and apprehensive and you switch your hands from the wall to him, his shirt and belt as solid as the stone. You hang on to him all the way up the tunnel, fighting to kill the hiccups, your mind blown.

Bobby stands stock-still, gaping at the damage you've done, the side mirror barely hanging on by a wire, the huge disfiguring dent all across the driver's side. He's got a look on his face that you can imagine he'd adopt upon stumbling over a mutilated corpse, revulsion and terror and unnatural fascination. All your nerves fire at once as you watch him close his hands into fists, his back draw hard and straight. It's about to go _down_ right here.

You throw yourself into his eyeline, fit your mouth with the wickedest smirk you can manage, and he immediately starts screaming at you. You feel like you've got ten minutes left to live, hurled into the fray and screaming right back. It gets bad real quick. You're composed of differing strains of desperation and panic and a wild senseless euphoria, some crazed adrenaline side effect.

Bobby calls you a son of a bitch and you call him a fucking cocksucker just because you know it will make him flush and stammer from rage, and because it's goddamn _true_ , which is the next thing you yell at him. You're vaguely aware of teammates at your back: Street, and you think maybe Chavvy, someone trying to get you to keep your voices down but no, _fuck it_ , you have the right to do this as horrifically as you want.

All Bobby wants to do is hit you, you can tell, and any other man in the world he would have already. You taunt him, you get close enough that he can't help wrenching a hand in your shirt and then you get to shove him off, concrete thud of your hands on his chest. Bobby's face is bright red, his teeth constantly bared.

He whirls away from you and rips the side mirror off the car, throws it as hard as he can into the back windshield of your car. A ruler-straight crack perfectly bisects the glass, astonishing you and you're speechless for a moment. Bobby turns back with a mad grin and you tear right back into him, every terrible unfair thing you have ever thought about him, every weakness that you have learned over the years he's been yours. You can see how his face breaks a little more each time, how his hands are halfway up like something has him tied back from actually reaching for you.

You take it on yourself, shoving at him and prodding, provoking with your mouth running filthy as a sewer, and eventually he snaps and snatches hold of you, slamming you up against the side of the Escalade. His body presses close, painfully warm, and you hysterically throw your eyes over to the clubhouse door, find that your teammates have all abandoned you.

Bobby sneers, his eyebrows tilted sharply downwards, and asks with a new rasp, "My car, Richie? Out of _everything_ , you motherfucker."

You grin big and manic, fists braced on his chest. "Got your attention, didn't it?"

"You didn't have to, there's a million fucking ways, you fuck, fucking," and his arms are shaking, his face a mess of fear and anger. " _Vindictive_ , you coldhearted fuck you did it just 'cause you know, you fuckin' _know_ -"

"You, I know you," you spill out. A ragged metal edge is digging into your back, making you gasp every time Bobby jars you against the car. "I knew you were never gonna do it and I, I, I can't, I can't take another year like this."

Bobby's eyes are white with awe, his mouth an ugly slash, and he jerks his head. "Don't try and fucking turn it around on me, _fuck_."

"Fuck you," you half-shout. "Fuck your car too, it was never even that cool. I don't give a shit about any of that stuff, you just tell me, is that fucking _enough_ yet?" Your hand finds the side of his neck, your voice cracking awfully as you ask, "Is it done?"

Bobby just stares at you for the longest time, your thumb notched under his jaw and holding him in place. His face passes through too much for you to properly register, mainly because you are kinda about to cry.

Then Bobby tears away from you, a blow to your chest as he shoves away. He's breathing like it hurts, but he meets your eyes when he says plainly:

"Yeah. It's fucking done."

And he stares at you for a moment, blue gaze soaking over you and you can't read his face; you can't do anything right now. And then Bobby walks away.

You're out there for a while longer, the shadows growing long across the asphalt. You wait until your chest stops feeling ripped open, and then you get in your car. You wait until your hands stop shaking, and then you drive away from the ballpark, the stadium lights infesting your rearview mirror until you get onto the highway.

There's no words for it, really. All the ones that occur to you ring false just now. Your heart's not broken so much as missing. You want him back but mostly you don't. You do feel separated; you feel split in half.

You go to the condo and get your shit together on autopilot, distracting yourself by wishing you'd thought ahead and been the one to sign the goddamn lease, and then you drive around for eight hours before finding a quiet suburban street where you sleep in the back of your car.

You don't really sleep. You stare up at the crack in the back windshield, the way you can cock your head and make the moonlight glimmer in an angel-colored straight line. You replay the whole thing, almost four years scattered on a non-linear timeline in your memory. It's probably not the smartest thing, you should probably give yourself some time to get blind drunk and stupid-prank suicidal, some space to grieve, but you've always been contrary to your own damn self. Your mind goes where it wants, never keeps anything hidden from you.

So there's Bobby in the yellow Texas crab grass, on hockey player bedsheets in Canada, popping to his feet with the Pacific Ocean under his board, whipping his head to make droplets fly out in rays. There's Bobby with his arm around your shoulders in the dugout, and there's you fully aware that the moonstruck gaze you're wearing betrays you completely; there's you not caring at all.

You try to remember the first time and all that comes back to you is a lemon smell and how Bobby's surprised smile gave under your mouth. You can't remember the date or what the team's record was. Sometime in the summer. Sometime in the minor leagues.

And then the sun comes up, and it's a life sentence for you.

You go back to the ballpark, clothes stale and soft-worn. There are guys there who smile and clap you on the back; there is a ball for you to throw. You find a hotel for the rest of spring training, road trip mindset and you can never remember what city you're in when you wake up. You pitch and you avoid Bobby and Bobby avoids you and time passes like a bloodletting.

He looks as bad as ever, some small comfort. He's lost his charm and kinda puts everyone off, awkward interruptions and jokes that fall flat, and then he pretty much stops talking in groups bigger than two, and that's gratifying to see. You're the other side of the coin, bouncing from one teammate to another, climbing on the ones who'll stand for it, an deathless string of chatter from you because you can still talk; you have always been able to talk. You are at your funniest in the midst of a crisis, actually. Gallows humor for the win every time, and you build it around you as an instinctive shield.

There are probably specific ways you're supposed to handle this, stages and boxes to check-mark on the way to acceptance, recovery (as if there could be such a thing--it's not like your heart's going to spontaneously grow _back_ ), but you're not interested in that kind of thing. If you can't have Bobby, you don't want to feel better.

The season starts. Bobby moves back in with Adam and one of the relief pitchers, and you get a place all your own for the first time since Midland. You drift around room to room, gathering static electricity all over the surface of your skin. The sounds of you fixing breakfast in the morning echo.

Then you go to Kansas City.

In Kansas City it is raining, and the wind comes screeching around corners like taxicabs. The team struggles into the lobby, damp and irritable as a collective, converging on the table where the room keys are laid out. You hang back, having a modicum of patience unlike some of these motherfuckers, and you accidentally catch Bobby's eyes in the scrum, experiencing a fleeting jerk of clean honest love that makes you want to throw up, and you yank your head to the side, fixing your gaze on the floor.

The next second, Bobby is calling out to all assembled, "Drinks are on me, boys, who's game?" and the subsequent rousing cheer draws some nasty looks from a couple business-looking dudes drinking in the lounge.

So Bobby's stealing all your friends for the night. You consider crashing the event but you can't see any way that would end well. Instead you go buy a couple sixers of Molson that you intend to supply with a good home all by your lonesome, but coming down the hall you hear the distinct twang of VH1 Country leaking through Huston Street's door, and on a whim, you knock.

He glares at you upon answering, and you're worried for a second but he just says, "Nice shirt," kinda jeeringly.

You blink downwards at the yellow shirt with the retro-looking lion monster on it. It's not yours, and you assume it's Bobby's, but you just say that it's a little small and Street rolls his eyes, lets you in.

Things are mostly okay with Street now--he seems to have softened towards you since it ended with Bobby, which came as a total non-shock, of course--and you make him fetch buckets of ice until the sink is full and the beers installed. You drink sitting on separate beds, watching a _Big Brother_ marathon (you think it's season 4, but that far back is kind of a blur to you now), eating stale jelly beans left over from Easter, talking about nothing consequential.

Street is tense all through his shoulders and chestal area, but it gets better the more he drinks.

Street tells you that you could have gone out with Bobby and the rest of the guys, and you barely hold back your caustic laugh. You explain Bobby's need to claim some spoils so he can feel like he's won, but not with so many words as that. Then you make sure Street knows you're doing okay despite the general shittiness of your life just now.

You're putting on a pretty good front, if you do say so yourself. Street finishes his beer and goes into the bathroom for another. He calls out to ask you, "Do you think we shoulda gotten a place together? You and me and, I dunno, Adam or Dan?"

You snicker; that would drive Bobby _nuts_. "These are _my_ roommates," you lilt in answer, and Street appears in the doorway, grins at you charmingly.

"We coulda got a way better place than what he's got, too," Street says.

"As if that's hard. Bobby'd be happy with a fuckin' roof and no walls."

Street's eyebrows pull down as he actually considers it for a moment, then reports back seriously, "I'd definitely need walls."

Just the right state of drunk to burst out laughing at that, but it's a bit too sudden and suddenly you're coughing up a lung, hunching down and gasping for air, still trying to laugh despite all of it, because Street's a fuckin' trip sometimes.

He comes over all worried and pounds you on the back and it's like bombs going off in your chest so you push him away, haul in great wheezes of air and get yourself under control. You slump back into the couch, feel how red your face is.

"Fuck man," you say, looking your fill of Huston Street up close because usually you are too sober to indulge. "You're just so."

"What?"

Ah, you don't have an answer for him, nothing he wants to hear, anyway. _Distractingly hot_ , might be part of it, and there is all kinds of uncomfortable disassociation going on in your brain because it's not really convenient, in your largely devastated state, that the skittish straight boy still turns your crank so hard.

You're just drunk, anyway. You try to explain that to him too, hand fluttering near Street's shoulder, his knee, almost but not quite touching down, steered away at the last instant. It's unintentional and you hope he doesn't notice, but he gets up and goes back to the other bed a little while later, so maybe he did.

You keep up the pace, passing through a maudlin stage thinking about stuff you and Bobby used to get up to in hotel rooms, and then you become abysmally dejected and try not to let it show.

The two of you drink the sink dry and Street's the one to find it empty, comes back in and faceplants onto the foot of your bed. You nudge him with your foot to make sure he's still conscious, and he is, muffling into the bed and then turning his head to peer up at you, eyes narrow, gimleted. Closing your eyes to avoid that keenness, you hear him ask you:

"Why did you guys break up?"

A wince makes you jerk, and you go still as he continues, "I mean, it wasn't just because of the car, right?"

No, it definitely wasn't _just_ anything. Your hand is on your stomach and under your fingertips you can feel a pulse in the cup of your hip, scampering along. You're glad you're not looking at him just now.

"The car was just, what do you call it. A symptom. The last straw. Like that."

It was what you _had_ to do. Bobby truly cares about so few things: baseball, family, friends, you, car. You only wanted to hurt him enough that he would see you were kinda being slowly beaten to death over here.

Street rolls over onto his back and you apply the sole of your socked foot to his side, a neat curved fit that appeals to you in your state. He asks you, "So why, then?"

You go quiet. It's actually not the worst question you've ever heard. You broke up because you killed Bobby's car, because he wouldn't break up with you, because he kept picking fights and all you know how to do is fight back, but where did it all _start?_ All you can see are the repercussions, the havoc wreaked; you were never at all clear on the causes.

You give Street the eye, buying some time. "Why do you want to know?"

His hand is on your foot, thumb tapping away warmly and you don't think he realizes he's doing it, confirmed when he offers, "Drunk."

"Lightweight."

"That too."

You curl half a smile, horribly endeared to him for the moment. Street's got his head rolled to the side, gazing at you in a steadily intoxicated manner.

"He just bugs the shit out of me," you say, thinking that you can just say some generic stuff and not have to get into it when your defenses are so many crumbled walls before you. "He's always got to be so cool all the time."

"You're cool all the time," Street says, and you look away.

"Yeah, but I don't _got_ to be."

That right there is just a flat-out lie, but you're comfortable enough with it, having lived in its company all your life. Street looks kinda confused, and you just want to say something that he'll believe, _accept_ , and you let fly what falls first into your mouth.

"He thinks, like, we can hang everything on a good start. He doesn't, he's been on fucking autopilot. And he's always _there_ , can't get rid of him, even though he promised me it wouldn't get like this, _promised_. And then I was like, where the fuck did you go, and he was all, still here, and like, fuck if he was, you know? He kept pickin' fights. Like, like, if he wasn't gonna want me anymore, next best thing would be to hate me, which, just. That doesn't make any sense, right?"

Street bites his lip and shakes his head, fingers tight around your ankle and his eyes lunatic bright, drunk-flushed and shining. "Not really," he says, and you've mostly forgotten the question.

"So, okay," you say. "He's crazy. Whatever. He wanted a fight, fuckin' well got one, didn't he."

You cast your hand through the air as if clearing smoke. Your face feels all pinched and strained, your mouth stiff in a half-snarl. You don't understand a lot of what you're getting at, and Street's probably not doing much better on the specifics, but the relevant emotions are coming across, you're sure.

You close your eyes, aching in every part of you. Street kinda rubs at your ankle, means to be comforting.

"Do you miss him, Richie?" Street asks, and you jolt at the name even though it's not just Bobby who calls you that, it's just all a little too close right now.

You sigh. "He gave really good head." Best of your life, actually, now and forever, and for a second the loss of it seems the very greatest tragedy of all.

Street makes a goofy squeaking sound, shocked and jolting on the bed, and you crack up, wondering what the fuck is with him tonight. You've been this drunk with him before, but never when it was only the two of you, although maybe you've just forgotten. You and him were once very good friends, after all.

"I was just askin'," Street says in a drawl that he usually cleans up pretty good.

He sits up and after a second you follow suit because the ceiling is spinning, anchor yourself with a knee against Street's hip. You still don't know why Street wants to know, but he's here with you, not grossed out but actually asking, and it's just like you to finally trust him, a year too late.

"I do miss him," you say. "He was, like. Everything. For so long. I keep trying to remember when it started, like, what day was it, where were we, what was our record. It's no good, man. Bobby, he's, he's always been. Just. Always been."

There is a broken note in your throat, and your hands are shaking on your knees. You think about how you were waiting for Bobby before you met him, and how you'll still be in love with him fifty years from now. Stupid fucking heart.

"Not enough to get back together, though?" Street says in his absently hopeful way, and you pause, imagining it for a spare instant before you shut down that line of thought without mercy. You shake your head.

"Nah. I. I know about things being over."

And it is. It's _over_. It lances through you, rings like a silver bell, a coin thrown into frozen metal. You were in love with your best friend and it was wonderful and now it's done. You have been badly damaged by the fall.

You catch Street eyeing you worriedly, and fix a neat smile on your face, swaying forward and resting your forehead on Street's shoulder. He's better than a wall, shifts and twitches under you, smells like beer and candy, and you think you can trust him now, you've already told him the worst parts.

"Wanna know something?" you mumble into his shoulder. "It's a secret."

Street swallows so hard you hear it. "Sure."

You smile, raising your head and carefully angling for Street's ear, whispering low and rough, "I did it on purpose."

"What?" Street whispers back. He's trembling, holding incredibly still as you wrap your hand around his wrist. You've never been this close to him; you have no idea why he isn't running away.

"His car," you say, cathartic shame burning in you. "Did it on purpose, I wanted to fuck it up. Bobby, he, he loves that car so fucking _much_."

Street exhales in surprise, turns to look at you and you get stuck on his perfect face again, the lovely shape his mouth makes as he bites his lip.

"That's terrible, Rich."

You kinda shrug, looking away because it hurts a whole lot just then, and you don't want to show it. "It was pretty bad for me too."

And you go to move away, eyes stinging and blurry and you're gonna go put some water on your face or something but instead Street reaches up and cups his hand around the back of your head, kisses you quick and hard on the mouth.

Too hard, your teeth clacking together and a sweet-tasting breath sucked out of him when you gasp, and then your brain _fucking explodes_.

You fling yourself back, grappling for the edge of the bed, eyes and mouth round and enormous because Huston Street just _kissed_ you, and nothing makes sense anymore.

"What the _fuck_ , Huston?" you fairly shriek.

He stands, cramming his hands in his pockets and stuttering out, "Sorry sorry sorry," like it's the only word he knows. He bee-lines for the door and you feel a sharp instant refusal, because he can't just pull that shit and then _leave_ , and you catch his arm before he can reach for the handle, jerking him around and staring at him helplessly even though he won't look at you.

"What was that?" you ask.

His face is so red it looks painful, and Street shakes his head, panic spilling off him every which way. "Nothing, stupid. Won't do it again, I'm really sorry."

"No, but." He's missing the point, you think, pressing your hand to his stomach and pushing him against the door, pinning him so that he'll be sure to hear you. "You're not. I mean. You're from _Texas_."

"I didn't mean anything by it," Street claims with his voice breaking and off-pitch, really obviously lying because in what _world_ does something like that not mean anything.

"But you're not _gay_ ," you try to remind him, skating a fine edge of hysteria. "You don't even like me being gay."

"That's not. You just assumed, but I never. I never said that."

"Jesus fucking Christ, dude," you say, amazed, and he responds out of habit:

"Don't swear," and then winces hard.

You are just staring at him, enveloped in utter shock. Street doesn't hate you, and that look carved so deeply on his face--it really kinda seems like he never did. Never a bigot, just jealous out of his mind--is something like that even _possible?_

You touch your hand to his face, pull his chin up so you can get a look at his eyes, and he's agonized, ripped up so bad it's like looking in a mirror. You are having trouble breathing all of a sudden--Huston might kind of _really_ like you.

"You, you want this?" you manage to ask, gesturing weakly between the two of you. A flood of images rattles through your soused mind, heating you swiftly. Street's head shakes at once and you freeze, thinking that he's only fucking with you, only drunk but still a bastard, and you demand, "Then what the fuck?"

He draws in a deep breath, his chest almost touching yours, and says slow, "It's not this that I want. It's. You."

You're lost for a stretch of time, feverishly searching his face because you don't know what he means, you need some other clue. _Not this but you_ , you hear like an echo even though it's not quite what he said, and you watch as Street glances at your mouth every couple of seconds, glaze-eyed and breathing shallowly.

It strikes you suddenly, that you don't really care all that much what Street's reasons are. He doesn't want to be gay but he definitely seems like he wants to blow you, and you can see yourself helping him out with that, suddenly and in digital clarity. He'd look so pretty on his knees, turning that untouchable face up into your hands.

Awareness burns through you that you _could_ , not like that boy in Vancouver after Bobby tried to leave you the first time--you won't even have to picture Bobby's face. Street is no longer the type of friend that you would regret losing, should it all go to hell in the morning, and you can _do_ this; you want to very badly.

You smile and take Street's shoulders in your hands, drive him into the door and kiss him properly. It's full of intent, your teeth scraping over his lower lip and he gasps so you lick into his mouth, hot over his tongue and deeper than hell because that's how you kiss now, you've learned well.

Street moans and shivers under you, hands cupped around your head and his mouth moving a beat behind yours, frightened but into it, incredibly into it. Your leg is between both of his and he's grinding down on you, hips working in slick little moves between your hands.

You lay marks all along his collarbone, tug open Street's fly and he makes this choked begging noise, arching into your grip, and you decide that sometime soon you are going to fuck him, you are going to do fucking _everything_ to this beautiful kid. He's pretty much exactly what you need right now.

You're murmuring against his ear, empty words of encouragement to go along the rhythm of your hand stroking him off, the whining pants jerked out of him. Street rolls his body up into you so sweet it makes you falter, but then you lick his earlobe and twist your wrist and he comes messily and crying out all over your hand and his own shirt.

Street collapses on the floor, lies there sucking in air through an enormous idiot grin that he doesn't seem to realize he's wearing. He looks ruined, debauched and carelessly used and you drop to his side, burying your face in his neck until he guides your face up and kisses you again. There's an untamed shuddering astonishment pulsing out of him and you groan into his mouth, knocking his legs apart and fitting your body in between.

You can go mindless now, just rock down into him, rubbing hard against Street's stomach while he gapes up at you, mouth hanging open because you can't stop kissing him, not for the godforsaken life of you.

Eventually you get yourself together enough to grab his hand and shove it between your bodies, showing him how, steady grinding palm and fingers working best they can through denim. You brace your free hand next to Street's head, staring down at him and he's staring right back, pink-faced and black-eyed and looking purely amazed. He touches your face as if checking to make sure you're real, and for whatever reason that finishes it for you.

Totally beyond your control, you almost say Bobby's name, hiding it in a ragged moan so no one knows but you.

You slump off Street, sliding to his side with your arm slung over his stomach. This position is instinct too, but you're not thinking about that; you're not picturing anybody else's face.

Street falls asleep right away, and you try to, but the floor is thin-carpeted, hard and cold and Street's heartbeat under your cheek is beating slightly off the correct rhythm. You carefully disentangle yourself, go to the bathroom to clean up a little bit.

Watching yourself in the dark mirror is like watching a stranger; you keep being unable to meet your own eyes.

You go back out into the short hallway, studying Street passed out in front of the door, sprawling loose-limbed and vulnerable. You conjure up the look on his face after he found out about you and Bobby, stricken and morose and so _disappointed_ , so easy to misinterpret. It occurs to you in a remote way that a lot of the bad stuff with Bobby can be traced back to that life-changing look on Street's face.

That last thought unsettles you, and you wish you could slip out as if you'd never been, but there's still a closer lying in front of the door. You take one of the beds instead, set your phone to wake you up in a few hours though you don't expect to sleep. You don't really, just sort of floating back and forth between dreams and memories, Bobby and Huston and all these days you've lived.

You pull yourself up a few minutes before the alarm goes, take a quick shower. You feel like you've been buried alive and then dug up, lungs full of dirt and worms in your brain. The drunk is long gone and you miss it dreadfully.

You kick Street lightly awake, let him know that he's blocking the door but he doesn't grasp the essentials of the message for the longest time, blinking and woozy and plainly well-fucked.

He lets you pull him up, weaving on his feet and he looks sick to his stomach. He's not looking you in the eye either, same as that fucker in the mirror, though it is very dark.

"So, I, I'll see you later, I guess?" Street manages, and there's a catch in his voice, hitch in his breath that gives you pause.

"Are you, like. You're not freaking out or anything, right?" Street shakes his head hard but you don't buy it. "Because you look kinda like you're freaking out."

"I'm not the one leaving," Street says sharply, and then looks appalled with himself.

You're dumbfounded, certain that you're missing some crucial bit of evidence because it keeps seeming like Street is fucking in love with you or something.

You walk him backwards into the wall, rest your weight against him with a sigh. You have a creeping bad feeling starting up about this, regretting at least four of the beers you had last night, but you tell Street:

"I have to go. If I stick around somebody'll see me leaving in the morning." You slide your fingers into his front pockets. "You gotta trust me, man."

Street nods, and you kiss him, you say, "It gets better after this," not a hundred percent sure if you should be lying to the kid but hell, he's lied enough to you.

You give him a smile and leave him sagging against the wall, mute and entreating you with his lightless eyes but you are tired and your head hurts, and you can't deal with him anymore tonight.

It's just dawn, powdery rose color seeping through the windows at the either end of the long hallway, and you are staggering, reeling.

Then Bobby's there.

He comes out of his room quietly, not noticing you, and he's wearing his workout clothes, his iPod already clipped to his waistband. Can't sleep and going down to the gym, yes, you remember that. You remember everything.

You whisper his name but he's got his back to you and his headphones in. He doesn't turn, walking away and away and away.

You want him to see you. You want him to look at you for real and notice the marks on you, hickeys and regular bruises, your damp hair and swollen mouth, skin crisscrossed with scars and open wounds. It's written all over you: you're no good on your own, you're a shambling mess of ill-fit parts when he's not around, and if he would just _understand_ that.

But you don't say anything. You stand in place and watch him until he reaches the stairwell at the end of the hallway and vanishes momentarily into the rising sun.

Then you go back to your room. You strip out of your clothes and crawl into your side of the bed, and you try as best you can to fall asleep.

THE END


End file.
